The Bugle - Netherlands? More like Nether happened!

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

This week we visit the moon, discuss sausages v. hostages, and for our friends in New York - what is a bribe?Andy is with Anuvab Pal and Tiff Stevenson in a podcast that is funded by you, the listener...Hear more of our shows, buy our book, and help keep us alive by supporting us here: thebuglepodcast.com/This episode was produced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4317 of The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual but it must also be emphasized. Idiotic world. I'm Andy Zottsman coming to you not live from here in the shed of immutable truth in South London and I'm delighted to be joined this week. Firstly joining us from India. It's Anu Vabh Pal. Anu Vabh welcome.

Welcome back to the Mugle. How are you? Hello, Andy. Hi Tiff. How are you both? Hi. Well, they they've just introduced our other guest there just building up the tension straight joining us this week did you just did you just steal my shine there any back the whole medium the entire house things

in Mumbai well and you know I just got back from Darjeeling. I was in a gig in Darjeeling and I was stranded till last night. Monsoon rain, sub Himalayan terrain and a road collapsed in a landslide. And this was 2024 and I started wondering, how did the British ever get up there in 1890? How badly did they need tea that they were willing to risk a mountain range falling on their head to get the right brew? Well that's just the way we will do anything for a good cup of tea. Tiff, how are you? I'm good, I'm good. I've got a little bit of a cold today so my cure for that of course a steaming mug of tea. It is the cure all to everything.

That's right. That's why it's worth clambering up every available mountain in, in Asia to, to, to get a hold of it. Um, we are recording on the 30th of September, 2024 on this day in 331 BC. Can you believe it's that long ago? Alexander the Great defeated King Darius III of Persia in the Battle of Gorgomila in modern-day Iraqi Kurdistan. Disappointing result for KD3 as he was known at the hands of ATG. Transcripts from the post-battle press conference show Darius admitting to being, quote, gutted

and saying, fair play to Al Al he's a terrific strategist And he's done us over right good and proper with his light infantry to be fair Darius to finally refused to quit as emperor of Persia despite a second successive loss To the Macedonian ace but insisted he was still the right man for the job And would think about how best to bounce back from defeat whilst fleeing his life And then he fled for his life. That was 30th September, all the way back in 331 BC. And well, this is a hundred years anniversary since the 31st of September 1924. The only recorded instance of the 31st of September happening after an administrative

error in the League of Nations calendar department led to the UN precursor organization posting the day's date as the 31st of September causing mayhem in global financial markets triggering the famous Wednesday wobble on the New York Stock Exchange that caused stocks to lose 98% of their value in a day before rebounding back the following morning when the calendar was corrected to the 1st of October. So let that be a lesson to you. Obviously that didn't happen, but it could have happened. And the fact that none of you interrupted me to say, Andy, that's bullshit. So just, you know, we've learned nothing as a species, just, just because a man is saying

something authoritatively into a microphone doesn't mean he should be believed. Fact check, fact check, fact check. We should be doing this in the American debates. I'm not coming in quick enough for my fact checking. Yeah. So once you start fact checking the bugle, that is a portal into the gates of confusion that you will never be able to close. Stock market collapsing 98% on a made up day sounds perfectly legitimate. As always a section of The Bugle is going straight in the bin. This week we have life hacks from the animal

world. We like to think of ourselves as the most successful species on the planet but are we really living life the most efficient way? We look in our section of the bin this week at potential life hacks from the animal world that might help us humans including don't sleep in six to eight hour chunks every day, save up one three or four month hibernation every year, then work hard, play harder for the remaining eight or nine months. Yeah. And also never forget, never remember the life of a goldfish is generally one that is

unencumbered by historical fury, personal resentment, or the kind of things that hold us back as a species. So essentially, I think those are two things that would definitely make us function better as a species. Any other suggestions, things in the animal world that you think would help us out on a personal level? Storing nuts. Right. Like squirrels do. Just maybe keeping bits of food that you might have later just in the couches of your cheek. Okay. Like little food snooze. That could work.

I was just reading octopuses, octopi, they hunt with fish and fish are like the henchmen. They go in there and sort of dig out stuff and then the prey come out and then the octopus I'd quite like some henchmen, you know, like when I step out just having a group of people Just having the initial conversations and then I go and have a conversation Well, maybe and would they you know a fish or an octopus could could could could do that I mean particularly monsoon season and about me quite effective of doing things. I have, particularly in monsoon season, Anivab will be quite effective with doing things. I have an affinity with the turkey vulture because it vomits as a form of self-defense.

I am prone to a bit of that. Right. I think we could encompass that more into our dailies. A kangaroo pouch, that's a good one as well. Just to carry stuff. I've got one of those anubhav any more description needed no i mean that's what i call it that's my nickname top story this week well since things on earth are not going terrifically well broadly or specifically, we thought we'd look to the skies for our top story this week and this thrilling news that Earth, our famous planet, is set to get a new moon. Yes, we've been

waiting for this for so long. A second moon is coming our way. If you're one of those people who thought that we really aren't getting the best out of our one solitary moon, that other planets with more moons have it better, even if Saturn's alleged 146 moon tally is frankly unnecessary and preposterous. Who needs that many moons? I bet Saturn can't even remember half of their names. But anyway, it seems ridiculous that we on Earth, which lest we forget, is the best known and most popular planet in the entire solar system and as far as we know the universe we just pootle along with one

poultry f**king moon it's a big one it's an influential one but it's still only one so the good news is we're about to be treated to a free new complimentary trial second moon uh... a small asteroid has just joined Earth on a short-term deal for about two months from from this weekend just past it's going to orbit the crap out of the earth for a few weeks and then is scheduled to

escape from the earth's gravity in late November and total back off into space in search for its next moon gig but I guess if this trial is successful we could be looking at a permanent second moon, hopefully bigger because this one is quite small. I mean, I imagine both of you as massive fans of moons in general must be very excited by this news. I'm pumped Andy. Well, actually I say that we went out the other night and it was a full moon, Andy. I well actually I say that we went out the other night and it was a full moon. The older Scottish husband and I and he looked at the moon. And then when we turned around the corner, the moon had got smaller, like it was shy. And I cannot believe he male gazed the moon. It got smaller.

He objectified the moon and it got smaller. He's like, Oh, look, look how big and shiny it is. And the moon got embarrassed and shrunk. And that is something that my husband did. So I feel ashamed and the patriarchy has struck again. Well, that's the thing with the patriarchy. You might think it's down, but it always bounces back. Look, it's about time. It is about time. Like you said, Andy, current moon, same boring

nonsense, right? New moon opens up a whole world to new culture. For example, a possible Pink Floyd reunification project, the dark side of this new moon, retelling of the 1979 Roger Moore James Bond classic moon raker part G. Retelling of the 1979 Roger Moore James Bond classic, Moonraker Part 2. Yep. It's going to be a scene. I think we'd all be in favor of that.

I mean, if you're expecting something along the lines of our world-renowned existing moon, you might be disappointed. You won't be able to see it because it's only 10 meters long, although your pet wolf, if you have one, will probably be inclined to howl at it if it's using a professional quality telescope. So do bear that in mind.

It's about 10 meters long, which actually makes it closer in size to a bench or a bread roll than what we generally think of as moons. But if the headline says we're getting a second moon, then I'm all in. I just want, I think this planet needs to change. And you know, this is a gratuitous piece of change. And I think it might it might just help us. I mean, admittedly, I have all the second things that we've been waiting for. Moon probably wasn't top of the list, you know, second chance, second opinion, second coming, second

place rosette after dropping below Neptune in the top planet for quality of life in the solar system rankings. Yeah, all those good. But you know, maybe sometimes the unexpected is turns out to be what you what you most need. And I think, you know, second moon could could do us a lot of good. Apparently, there's been loads of mini moons that have been spotted. But they're like, there's been a couple that have been spotted, but there's loads that have gone unnoticed. And

that's definitely true. Because my friend Lisa's hen do I definitely did a mini moon at that. That wasn't recorded and I didn't get the credit for it. Um, but I felt the effects of a second moon. Uh, I felt the set, the effects of it since August actually, cause I had two periods that month, either that, or it was a very stressful fringe. Also at one point there was a tide in my bath and I think that was mini moon. Oh, right. Okay.

Yeah. Good, good. Well, look, I've just been thinking if you are a person with a pet wolf that has its own telescope, you deserve to see the second moon. What, what, uh, what I'm interested to know is that there's, there's, there's, uh, according to this report, there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of objects out there that we haven't discovered. They said this highlights the importance of us being able to

continually monitor the night sky and find all of these objects. So it's good to know one day there can be a step to and sun in space. I will probably be related to them in some way because my great grandfather was Romany and he was a recycling pioneer, he used to make windmills and jam jars and sell them. So somewhere I want to run a sort of intergalactic bricker back shop, maybe on the mini moon.

Is it what you do with those? Those are you supposed to like spread them on toast like a regular jam or a bit crunch? You know, the windmills, the windmills and jam jars. And some breaking news also reaching us, the USA, China, Russia and India have all announced plans to put a human being on the mini moon by mid afternoon tomorrow at a combined cost of $8.5 quadrillion. I have a feeling ours will probably be the cheapest one because he's probably trying to go up there in a jam jar with the windmill. Back on Earth news now and well the latest from the Middle East I think can be summarized

in two words. Oh dear. You could have gone with another word after the O but definitely started with oh and then something four letters long I'm starting to think that some things aren't gonna be all fixed by Christmas as As I was hoping both last year and this year and for every year since or a 6000 BC or so And my main concern now is for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, because I think he will soon be suffering from repetitive strain injury from frowning and possibly weeping. And it's possible that his entire face will just be fixed in a permafrown and that he

will never be able to express any emotion again facially other than despair and disgust at what the world is becoming. And I'm very concerned about this. He issued a tweet. He put out a tweet last week. And this might be the saddest tweet he's put out, I think. The United Security Council can make a tremendous difference for peace. And I mean, that might be factually correct, but it also what one of the things that is least likely to happen.

On this planet bearing in mind that the members of the security council of the us a france. Any u k and china and. Russia and achieving unity amongst those five let alone the other ten non permanent members. That is not looking about as likely as el Presley winning the 2028 US presidential election. It's not completely out of the question, but it is a long shot and a lot of questions will be asked if it does suddenly happen. Russia in particular does not seem particularly unity inclined at the moment. Have you got any shreds of optimism to throw into this casserole of gloom? Well, I don't know. The UN nowadays reminds me

a little bit of the Roman Emperor Nero ending. You know, like him, no one told them when the people are up for a violin concert and when they need to read the room and not play the violin because people are otherwise busy. I think they get together, they say a lot of things and I've learned a thing from Millennials, it's called a word salad. It's one of the healthiest ways of consuming words. I often wonder that if you've got word salad on one side and bunker buster bombs on the other, I feel like the latter might be a little more effective. Well, there's that famous saying, the pen is mightier than the sword. And the only problem with that is that it's completely and utterly untrue.

And also the pen is definitely not mightier than the nuclear bomb, for example, or various other forms of military hardware. But it's a charming idea to cling to, however naive. Politico referred to the UN's relevance problem like it's a female pop star attempting a comeback. The last kind of big thing they were doing was to propose this 21 day ceasefire. Yeah. And that everyone had come together to propose that. And then it's just been treated as a serving suggestion, I guess. Personally, I mean, I'm not really in favor of a 21 day ceasefire. I'd much rather have a 21 millennium ceasefire, which I think will be just enough time to let everything and everyone calm down and the end of which

people might have forgotten what they were fighting about But that might still be on the conservative Conservative side. I mean maybe this this idea of unity in the un security council It's like the start of an american sports movie where a team of people who don't get on at all Can't play well together. They gradually bond and they end up winning a trophy and everyone getting very excited And yeah by this time next year, we'll have kirstama whoever's running france by then And yeah, by this time next year, we'll have Keir Starmer, whoever's running France by then, Kamala Harris, please, Xi Jinping and Vlad Poodles. I'll be singing Love Lift Us Up where we belong at a special Eternal Peace concert in Beirut. We just don't know at this stage.

They'll definitely be serving sausages. Well, yeah, so this was the big highlight from last week was when Keir Starmer brought some much-needed levity into the Middle East issue By accidentally saying we should assume accidentally actually I say that I mean it's possible. He said he said sausages instead of hostages and People rather rashly assumed

that That it was a slip of the tongue. I mean, do you think it definitely was tiff or do you think actually? that it was a slip of the tongue. I mean, do you think it definitely was Tiff or do you think actually? I don't know, maybe he was doing, who's the guy that does all the spooky songs? You know, like eat it and- Weird Al Yankovitch.

Weird Al, maybe he was weird out in the speech. I'm just gonna swap words in. Or maybe, maybe we've got it all wrong. Maybe this whole time dogs have been asking for hostages and not sausages. Do you? Yeah. Keep taking them to the butchers and they're like, why are you bringing me here? I said I want hostages.

They should definitely return the hostages. But if Hamas did take some sausages, they should return that as well, honestly. You know, I think they should give back both those things that they've taken. I would agree with that. Also, I mean, it's possible that Keir Starmer is just trying to enter himself into the pantheon of great misspoken words and famous speeches. Because we generally only remember the retakes when people make a mistake and not the original version with the mistakes. Starmer's mistake was that it was broadcast live so he couldn't re-record it with hostages

instead of sausages. But for example, John F. Kennedy, his first effort was Ich bin ein burly nerd because he loved rugby and he loved stats. Robert Oppenheimer, now I am become Death, destroyer of curls. Death for straight hair without the faff. This is a very good question. Margaret Thatcher's, there's no such thing as sobriety. And Mao Tse-Tung, political power grows out of the apparel of a nun.

Who are Mrs. and of course FDRs. The only thing we have to fear is ferrets health. Just someone had mistyped his, his auto queue. And of course, Patrick Henry, the American revolutionary in 1775. Give me Liberty or give me free clothes and tickets to an arsenal game. Well, that was maybe that was Kirstama as well. What we do know is if there were sausages, they definitely weren't pork. Yeah, I mean that probably would have helped. Maybe that would help. I don't know. Maybe

that's something that can bring people together. I am starting to worry that Gutierrez is really not getting a lot of job satisfaction, which is very important in the modern workplace. You know, in the 2020s, you want to be to to get into your job and and feel happy and content and i just don't think you know he himself admitted that the un cannot mediate in conflicts where the parties are not themselves seeking mediation so you can understand why he's so gloomy and it is hard to be held i still personally like to think the glass is half full albeit that is half full of the shattered remnants of what used to be the top half of the glass so that's the way I see the situation look also I don't know there's been too much pressure on America to always mediate

things right you're a big sports fan I would imagine what if there was someone completely from the left field who comes in and mediates and solves this and takes care of the ship? You know, like Gabon steps up and you hear an announcement that Djibouti has Stepped up and taken care of the whole thing got everyone to sit down and everyone's gone home You know, like I feel like other players need to step up now. Yes Well, it does it does seem that whatever we're doing at the moment isn't really, isn't really working.

And I mean, it's possible even rather than having countries, you should just get randomly selected people or even sports teams from around the world should be someone to write, okay, this week you are going to sort out the Middle East, the Middle East crisis, the Jacksonville Jaguars, you're going to take a week off your troubled starts, the NFL season, and you're just going to sort out the Middle East, the Middle East crisis, the Jacksonville Jaguars, you're going to take a week off, you're troubled start the NFL season, and you're just going to go out, you're going to sort the Middle East, the Middle East out. I think I mean, that could work Paris Saint-Germain could just go and instead of playing playing overplayed football, they could just I haven't thought through the logistics.

I think Man City send them in to sort out the Ukraine. It's about time we started using sports washing for the purposes of good and human progress. I mean, for example, like you said, if the Saudis are going to own the second moon, there's definitely going to be a golf tournament on there. UK news now and well news has broken and when I say news has broken news has been created that Boris Johnson who created this piece of news considered invading the Netherlands if I may overstate things in a manner befitting a story about Boris Johnson making up some news in a new memoir entitled Unle. Boris Johnson has claimed that he considered A raid by sea on a Dutch warehouse to seize covered vaccines during the pandemic

Obviously, it's a fun story particularly for those people who like to look back fondly on the time when we had a certifiable fucking clown as prime minister And obviously this is Boris Johnson. He might've said that he was thinking of invading the Netherlands, but we know he would not have invaded the Netherlands because it would have been difficult. And that wasn't really his mo anyway, the deputy chief of the defense staff, Lieutenant General, uh, General Chalmers pointed out that there was only one potential problem with the plan, which would have involved apparently rigid, inflatable vote boats scuttling down Dutch canals at the dead of night to seize vaccines

from a warehouse had it happened, which obviously could never have happened. The only problem was that the UK would have had to explain why we were effectively invading a long standing NATO ally. Therefore, therefore this this otherwise apparently flawless plan to steal vaccines from a Dutch warehouse using inflatable dinghies. But that obviously just couldn't go ahead. I mean, Tiff, I know you've been waiting for Boris Johnson's memoir to be published as you know, the the book that you've been waiting for all your life really. What did you make of this story? Calling it Unleashed sounds like it's going to have a tie-in fragrance, which would probably be a fart if it was Boris Johnson. Also that suggests at some point in time

Boris was actually leashed, like trained for walkies and punished for hiding in fridges. Boris said we considered aquatic raid. That's what was described as aquatic already. It's got into bond territory immediately. Aquatic raid on Netherlands to seize COVID vaccine. And I just sort of thought about this. I was like, of course, because any chance Bozza can have to make himself wish.com Churchill, he will take it. So when Lieutenant General Doug Chalmers told the Prime Minister it was possible, the plan was certainly feasible and would involve using rigid inflatable

boats, you know, he was there going, we will fight them on the beaches. That's just an excuse to get that line out. And then it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not baffling. It's like you say, it's not real news, is it? It's like, what does the book cover? Well, it covers, it covers this plot, Oceans 11, or, you know, in this kind of version, Oceans cunts. There doesn't need to be 10 or 11. There just needs to be one. It just needs to be Boris. But the other parts of the book have him denying eating cake again. This is what we can expect from this exciting tome, this hotly anticipated tome, denying eating cake as what he described as the feeblest event in the history of human festivity, which was his 56th birthday during lockdown. I saw no cake, I ate no blooming

cake. If this was a party, it was the feeblest event ever. I'd only just got over Covid. I did not sing, I did not dance. So those appear to be the criteria for a party. Whoever the party is in honour of, they must sing or dance, otherwise it is not a party. So how many parties have you been to Andy that have not been parties? I've never seen you sing or dance. No, I don't think. Yeah. That means I've never been to a party, I think. I've never held a party. Yeah. I mean, you were at my wedding reception. Maybe you sang, maybe you danced. I did neither of those things, Tiff. No, no. So was it even a party, Andy? Definitely not. Ash's 2005, Andy, I think ended up in a in a late night karaoke bar.

Dancing with 15,000 men. I have never in my almost 50 years on this planet, I've never done karaoke. And I consider that half a century well spent. But then I'm a miserable f**ker. So you know, you've got to balance that factor in as well. We give Boris Johnson a lot of criticism for failing to be the Churchill he always dreamed of being. But in many ways he got halfway there because Churchill famously said, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. And Boris Johnson has got as far as I have nothing to offer. So it's a start. It's a start. It's another piece of mopaganda.

That's what I call it when Boris spouts a bit of nonsense because he does it while messing up the hair. I haven't read the book, but I just want to know, Andy Tiff, do you think there's stuff in there where Boris Johnson takes credit for great moments of British history where in some inexplicable way he was present like in Norman day for example? Yeah I would hope so. I hope he's claiming that he was the genius behind most of his and Bard Kingdom Brunel's best works and probably wrote half of Shakespeare's, well all of Shakespeare's history plays given that they're absolutely full of bullshit. That would stack up I think. Battle of Hastings? Yeah. Probably his great great great great great great great. He probably came up with the word ashes

after his third breakup because the rivalry needed a title Bugle crime section now and it's been a while since we had a crime section in the audio newspaper I can't remember, Chris, can you remember if you've done a crime section before? I mean we just talked about Boris Johnson so talked about Boris Johnson so this is our first crime section for half a minute here on the bugle very exciting news this it's been claimed that artificial intelligence could solve cold cases a chair of the National Police Chief's Council claimed that historic crimes could be solved. This technology, I mean, I should before we do this, I should emphasize that no bugle co-host has been involved in any historic crimes. Anuvabh, for example, was not responsible for a series of bank robberies in 1920s Michigan. Tiff Stevenson did not assassinate the King of Rurotania in the 1840s and none of

our other co-hosts have done things like that either. But apparently this AI detective work can rifle through evidence at such a rate that it can process in just 30 hours the amount of evidence that would take a single human detective 81 years to get through which I think means that if we stick with human cops in each case takes 81 years no crimes would ever be solved before those cops died which might explain why things take so long to get through the court I might misunderstood that but anyway but 30 years to do 81 years worth of work it's so high-powered that it can even fill in

the necessary paperwork associated with 81 years worth of human police detection in just 412 years. The breakthrough has raised hopes that even more excitingly than writing the failures of justice. This same technology could produce up to 2,700 true crime podcasts per second, which could make it the most significant technological advance in human history. Tiff, I know that you're a

huge fan of AI taking over every aspect of human life, This must be particularly exciting. It can simultaneously examine information from multiple sources, including videos, social media, emails and hard drives. And then the chairman of the National Police Chiefs Council, Gavin Stevens, even suggested it could be used to crack previously unsolved cases like Jack the Ripper. Yes, it's going to go on JTR's Facebook page and troll his posts. The lethal the lethal apron is checked into the 10 bells in Whitechapel. What's on your mind? Feeling stabby today. You know, Facebook memory pops up and it says share this spree from 1890 with a couple of laughing emojis and one of a scalpel. Like we don't, we don't need cold cases. We don't need AI on cold cases. We have internet detectives for that. We have obsessed middle aged women get out of our way. We're busy doing that. This

is technology coming for our jobs once again. How am I going to spend my afternoons if it cannot be going through the internet opening up cold cases, true crime? I mean, come on. Do you want to take all my fun away? Also, it's being trialed by the British and Avon police. So you can't not think of hot fuzz the entire time. You know, are we actually going to investigate this? Are we going to get metal Mickey on it? Then we're just going to have a jam jam, scone jam, which is going to have a jam. Just going to have a scone. I was gonna say jam first. We're not terrorists. Anyway, the robots going to look at Vlad the impalers Instagram say jam first. We're not terrorists. Anyway, the robot's gonna look at Vlad the Impaler's Instagram reels later on so we don't have to do nothing.

I don't know if this is completely fair because for example, if they figured out, you know, was Tootin Carmen murdered and who is William Shakespeare, then both Sky History and BBC4 would have to shut down. Yes. They only exist for those reasons. Yeah. I mean, personally, I've long advocated computerizing the entire justice system. You just buff all the evidence into a computer. You set the tolerance according to the proximity of an election from vaguely sensible to lock

them all up and throw away the key. And then you have an instant jail that can recreate a 12-year stretch in HMP Snutterbridge in a harrowingly brutal half hour in something that's a cross between a cement mixer, a roller coaster, a tumble dryer and a 1950s boarding school. And basically you get the entire judicial process done in an afternoon. I can't see any drawbacks with that. I think you just describe India's legal system there, Andrew. Summary there. Very good. In other crime news, New York Mayor Eric Adams is facing federal charges, including bribery, wire fraud, and conspiracy. And news is actually now reaching us that Kamala Harris has just stepped aside to allow Eric Adams to run as the Democratic

candidate for president at last the Democratic spokesperson says we have someone who can properly take on Donald Trump and this is this is hugely exciting exciting news that finally American politics gets gets what logically it is headed for which is to two criminals up against each other uh for legal purposes i must i should say that eric adams is not yet a criminal i tell you who you need to leave it to investigate as to whether or not that is true middle-aged women on the internet thank you so he's being investigated for getting thousands of dollars worth of gifts from turkish investors right and i'm sure you guys have talked about this on the bugle recently your prime being investigated for getting thousands of dollars worth of gifts from Turkish investors, right?

And I'm sure you guys have talked about this on the Bugle recently, your Prime Minister got thousands of pounds of clothes as presents. Now, this is just the Indian perspective here. Where is the crime here exactly? Because in our politics, we would just refer to this as Tuesday. In our politics, we would just refer to this as Tuesday. Give me an example of a local Mumbai politician, a city MLA. He got convicted for a bribe. Basically he spent the money building a high rise building. He lives in it. The guy that gave him the bribe lives on the floor below and the guy prosecuting them lives

above. So everybody happy. You know, I think there's clear ways to think now. Do they call that a corruption sandwich? Here's the weird thing. There's a lot of talk about the Indian Prime Minister being not corrupt. I mean, famously, there are loads of articles about how he's cleaning up the system. And that's why there's a strong argument going around India that the Prime Minister Modi may be foreign because not taking bribes is not in our DNA. Till an editorial recently said that maybe someone's giving him a bribe to not take a break. And finally on this week's Bugle, our tech and entertainment section.

Technology continues to drive humanity simultaneously forwards, backwards, sideways, and wildly often on track all at the same time. Tiff, there's been a suggestion that tech could provide a solution to government inefficiency. The CEO of JP Morgan Chase has backed Elon Musk's proposal to create a Department of Government efficiency, I mean politics prides itself on being as inefficient and counterproductive as possible. Is this really something that's going to catch the imagination of our legislators? Well Musk is already expecting Trump to win and he floated the idea that he would work in Donald Trump's government as part of a new commission

if the election were to go his way in November. But the efficiency department, I can already see it as a sitcom. Elon playing a David Brent-esque character who embarrasses everyone with his shocking dancing first day on the job. The first episode revolves around a meeting to see how the department can be more efficient and it takes six hours. And then Jamie Dimon puts some poor civil servant stapler in jelly and someone starts a game of football,

sorry, soccer, in the printing room and it all kicks off. I'm excited, I might pitch it to maybe, or maybe even Armando Iannucci will get a VEEP version of this. I don't see that happening. We can see if we can get him on the bugle to talk about it. If you're listening Armando, to come on anytime. In other tech news, it's turned that misinformation on TikTok

Tiff has been turning women away from using the contraceptive pill. So I've long thought that the internet is essentially replacing organized religion. I mean, it essentially fulfills the same role as God, that it knows everything about every aspect of your life. And it's massively judgmental towards women. I mean, it's an uncanny resemblance. And clearly, this is another manifestation of that, the internet basically taking over the role that was traditionally performed by the

world's great religions. Well, yeah, I think we need a morning after pill for the internet itself. One that gets rid of the seed of every bad idea that's been planted in your brain. I think going outside and going for a walk is probably the real life version of that. But yeah, trending on TikTok at the moment, pull out is trending on TikTok, the rhythm method, the crossing your fingers method, or my personal method, the algorithm method. That's where you spend so long trawling the internet, both parties lose interest in having sex. It's a very effective contraception. I found that the lifelong obsession with cricket statistics

works pretty well as well actually. Stab me till I'm soft baby. Family show. Women's health leaders are concerned that nonsense about hormonal contraception posted on TikTok and Instagram is driving a dramatic rise in unplanned pregnancies and abortions. So there's videos out there with hundreds of thousands of views from various influencers claiming that the pill is this generation cigarettes. But I thought this generation cigarettes was vapes. But you know, it's basically wellness

influencers promoting this, who are paid to promote alternative methods. You know the type that I'm talking about. If you've seen them on social media, they want to tell you about their youth and health, Alexia and somewhere along the line, it contains their own urine. And you can buy it, you know, and they'll say things like, I don't eat food, I eat my feelings, I literally write the emotion I'm feeling on a piece of paper and eat it. And you can make that more delicious by adding sriracha. Please hit subscribe. Next week, I'll be telling you about bumhole bathing. That's where you go into your garden, offer your ring piece to the sun, and that will unblock any negative emotions you may have around rampant exhibitionism. These are the kind of people filling up the ears of

impressionable young women on TikTok. And I sort of understand where it comes from, because you know, in the 70s, feminism was concerned about the fact that male doctors were prescribing all this stuff for women, but not listening to women's needs or understanding women's body and everything medically based, uh, re or medical based research is based on men as the default. So, you know, there should be a healthy amount of skepticism around. Stuff that's historically gone before, but there has to be a middle ground between, between that and this kind of like, yeah, sure. Just pull out.

Actually, if you do it standing up, you you can't you know, you're going back to like teenage If you do it standing up, you're not gonna get pregnant. I mean, what's Where's it gonna end? Well, I mean, I think if you do it whilst Whilst thinking about about 1980s Wimbledon finals. That's you probably won't get pregnant there either. I mean that's yeah spread that rumor. Particularly Conor's mackinrope. I shouldn't be using TikTok for finding kidney stone treatments by watching some of these videos. So, you know, right?

TikTok MD is like Doogie Howser MD, as in it's literally kids. It's like the same. It's just children telling other children what to... I saw one the other day that was about dry shampoo and this woman going, I recommend this dry shampoo over this one. And like, because there's toxic chemicals in this dry shampoo, because there's... the things you don't want are butane and propane. I'm like, the things that make aerosols work. I mean, those are literally,

so you can't recommend another aerosol. Like, aren't they the propellants? Am I missing something? I thought those were the things that made an aerosol be an aerosol. With my hair care regime, it's neat butane and neat propane four times a day. So you can go to a barbershop or a petrol pump. Anubhav, let's finish with some entertainment news from India. Well, the latest sort of ticket price controversy, we had the Oasis reunion tickets over here, people complaining about how much they were costing and the hotels and things putting their prices up around it. Coldplay have been causing a bit of a rumpus in India with the secondary market for their tickets for their shows next year.

Coldplay, big band from your country, Andy, very big, I think, in the 1900s and subsequently. New in India, big fan base, but basically we have about 1% of this country listens to English music. And so about, you know, say maybe a few hundred thousand people were expected to buy tickets. They put 180,000 tickets on sale on a website called Book My Show, which is sort of India's ticket master. And 42 million people tried to buy tickets.

Now, what I know, this is my cadadrum. Basically, now the government's got involved and they're saying that essentially what BookMyShow tried to do is make it democratic and India being the technology capital of the world, a bunch of bots and server farms got involved, bought all those tickets and put it on reselling platforms like fire go go. And the tickets were being resold for 9000 pounds. Now, there is a fan base for Coldplay in India, I'm sure. But I don't know how many Gen Z Indian kids are running out to buy 9,000 pound tickets for

Coldplay. So the debate going on in India was, you know, are there these many Coldplay fans in India? Because the Mumbai queue, there's a queue, so you signed up to buy tickets, it was all at one time, 12 o'clock on Saturday. And I tried to buy tickets, for example, and it said I'm 20 million in the queue for Mumbai. And Mumbai has only 16 million people. So. In India, being 20 million in the queue was quite near the front of the queue for a lot of things. I shouldn't have given up. I shouldn't. So I want to know what you guys think. Do you think this is a massive technology scam slash complex thing to resell or do you

think suddenly India has found Coldplay? They got so horny by it, it caused a population explosion almost instantly. Coldplay have made India so horny. Well you say it's Coldplay, but I did once statistically work out that the population of India more than doubled during the test match cricket career of Sachin Tendulkar, which did suggest that India found his perfectly correct high front elbow sometimes a little too much to deal with alone so yeah but it does seem like a lot to pay for a for a concert particularly for example when you

can buy tickets to my forthcoming tour show starting on the 1st of November way way cheaper than nine thousand pounds each in fact I think it's generally around about 17 to 20 pounds all the dates are on my website and is also on dot co.uk I will be as always solving all the world's greatest social and political problems through the medium of comedy So do buy your tickets for that All the tickets shows go on well start November to sometime in April Dotted around UK and hopefully we'll be announcing some Europe dates soon as well

Tiff anything to plug Yes, I'm gonna be in Rotterdam If you're there doing a show on Friday and in Paris on Wednesday, so any bugler listeners You know in those areas or surrounds get yourself along to the shows gonna be doing some solo shows there I'll be at the Nottingham Comedy Festival in November and also in Edinburgh in December Recording husband material the show I had at the Edinburgh Fringe So if you go to my Instagram, you can find all the dates for those kind of things about

Just one very quick thing. I'll Be back in the United Kingdom end of October for a short stint I will be at the Canterbury Comedy Festival because I'm just going through a very pious phase. It'll be a good place to perform. I think it's the 25th of October but I will put it out on Twitter. Great we are having a week off the bugle next week because I will be busy watching cricket in Pakistan by this time next week. The cricket season in England finished as we record yesterday afternoon and the remorseless churn of international sport is such that England some of the England players I think flew straight out off that game to Pakistan

So we have a week off. We will have a couple of bugles whilst I'm in Pakistan through October and then Back with regular shows for the rest of the year when of course also I will be on tour with my stand-up show the Zoltgeist So thank you for listening Buglers, don't forget to join the Bugle Voluntary Subscription Scheme, um, to give one-off or recurring contributions to help keep the show free, flourishing and independent, and get access to the world-exclusive monthly Ask Andy show. We're recording another one

pretty soon, Chris. Next couple of days. Two days time, Andy. Two days time. There we go. Wednesday. Questions incoming now Right, and thank you as always to all those who do subscribe Thanks for your support until we'll have a bonus sub episode next week and then back with a full bugle the week after that Thank you for listening. Goodbye The End