The Bugle - Oppenheimlich: Bugle Word Of The Year

Episode Date: November 25, 2023

Discover our words of 2023, plus the latest from the Covid enquiry, the Middle East, and rats. So many rats.PLUS: Become the owner of an exclusive episode of The Bugle, on 12 inch vinyl! Become a premium member NOW! https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateThis episode was presented and written by:Andy ZaltzmanMark SteelAlice FraserAnd produced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A- newspaper for a visual universe, uh, only kidding, a visual world, still nothing, inclusive evidence that the universe exists for me, but the world, I'm on it right now, and it doesn't get any more real than that. I am Andy Zoltzmann, still, and if I could turn back time, well, I wouldn't be doing this podcast for a whole host of reasons. If you're listening to this through a smart speaker,

just see what happens when this bit plays out. Hey, what are your smart speakers' current name is? Uh, do an impression of Andy Zoltzmann, Alice Fraser and Mark Stil talking about the world's news. And I'll see if you can tell the difference from what the rest of the show. Welcome to the show. So yes, there you are, our guest today, Alice Fraser in Sydney, New South Wales, about to move to Queensland. When are they going to update that name? Does it and when it just seems a bit insensitive now? Queens. Yes, but that is Queensland's calling card is being insensitive so I think

they're just going to lean in. And Mark Steel joining us from Crystal Palace? Correct. I'm in Northland at the moment. Oh right, I see a lot of reasons. Right. Well Crystal Palace is another place that really needs to update its name, the Alice? Correct. I'm in Norsland at the moment. Oh right, I have a series of reasons. Right. Well, Crystal Palace is another place that really needs to update its name, the f***ing Burt Down in 1936. It's like calling Pompeii never been inconvenienced by a volcanic eruption.

So how you... They say those in Crystal Palace shouldn't throw in sensory devices. Yeah, you know, they did. Yeah, that's what, that's what started that particular phrase. Only that phrase had existed in 1937. But some say, I don't see the problem. No, no, we've done. How are you, Mark? Well, I'll cancel, but parts of that I'm quite arm-wrell.

All right. I mean, that's a very direct way of breaking it to any bugle listeners who've not heard that news. You have written about it on and talked about it on your own on your own show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got cheerier at the moment because the bad thing that happened about six weeks ago I'm recovered from that. I didn't know if this treatment starts next week. So the moment, I'm in this little pocket of cheeriness where I'm quite feel fine. And the sliced little thing gives me immense joy.

Or the wick declares around. I mean, what's paying? This is the sort of thing that makes life worth living. Look at the cat doing a shit. Life goes on. This is my museum. Well, I recommend it. It's great cancer.

You say, go, go, go, go. And then I had one day that was really grim. One of the console, this console, when it probably wasn't going to win any awards for communication skills, said, this is exactly what it was. Not good news, Mr. Steele. And he said, and that's what I knew for certain. He said, I've got cancer and this is secondary cancer, as you mentioned, two plagues. And I said, is it vital? And he'd go in, touch wood, and then touched a bit of wood?

That was I thought oh at least if he hadn't touched any wood that would have been even more disturbing. It's not even worth attempting a superstitious remedy. But anyway that's it's not. But anyway, it's not. It's always going to be all right. Do you touch what in Australia? For luck? I don't know, it's what I'm getting used to.

I don't know. No, we touch wood. We've got wood, we touch it. What? But you've got to do the other way. To do the other way. That means luck. Let's hope. And then maybe that's what did it,

because the next day off out there, that it, you know, we can't say, it's spread anywhere and therefore it's, what seems to be fairly pretty much certain that they'll deal with it. But, you know, and maybe the reason that they'll be able to deal with it is because he touched wood and whatever spirits and fairies

are in a sort of informed at that point, they noted it down. I think that's the kind of level of science that I've been hearing about here in the COVID inquiry, which we're talking about later. Well great, great to have you on the show. Alice, you are great to have you on the show. Alice, you are now approximately, what is it? It's over 75% pregnant now. Yes, almost completely pregnant. I like to see these things in statistical terms. I've almost achieved my final form of being entirely spherical. Touch wood. As I saw you, note. Yeah, it's very exciting.

It's a delight in every possible way, particularly having a toddler means that I get to have the joy of being kicked from both the outside and the inside of the same time, which is novel. Why was asked in one of the meetings where they were talking about radio therapy and they go through all these side effects? The way she put it, she said, the ringgish wasn't perfect for this insult and she said, I must ask you, have you completed your family? What? What do you mean? And for thought, well, that is a cheek sore. And she said, no, if you complete your family, I said, I don't know what you mean. She said, well,

if you, and then off the rails, what she meant, and I, and then I realized, I watch you meant be that apparently this radio therapy, if I hadn't completed my family, was going to significantly impair my ability to make any more family. We are recording the 24th of November 2023, just a couple of days ago. It was 60 years since John F. Kennedy was assassinated by, I've got the envelope here, courtesy of a friend who works in the highest levels of American intelligence. Interesting. Very interesting. On the same day, the 22nd of November 1963, current Sunderland football manager Tony Mobre was born. Yes, the former Middlesbracent about came into the world at the exact same moment that John F. Kennedy left it. Read into that what you will. Also, at nine and a bit months, about 40 weeks later, Keanu Reeves was born. Read into that, what you will.

Also popping their clogs on the 22nd and November 1963, two giants of English literature, the wardrobe fetishes, CS Lewis, and dystopia, or aficionado, all of us, Huxley. It has to be disappointing if you're dying, thinking, well, I'm quite a literature celebrity. I'm gonna be absolutely front page news who's been shot.

What a disappointing way. As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. This week we look at the words of the year. Last year, the Cambridge Dictionary chose hallucinate as the word of the year, the word nerding book bothering boffins chose hallucinate after impressively branched out into new meanings specifically describing how AI generates text

It hallucinates text, well that was their word of the it's not the first person to hallucinate text. Yeah I didn't see that It's just a hallucination joke, never will you I didn't see that. It's just a hallucination joke, never. Not the first person to hallucinate text, to be honest. Also describes how former home secretary Suela Brafman acquires evidence before making policies. So hallucinates qualified as British word of the year for the European word of the year contest where I'll be up against the continents best verbal offerings including flaggette from France which is a slightly past expressed baguette. The words Hottie Tip to Challenge for the word of the year in 2024 include Draculaite which in economics is a company that sucks the blood out of defenseless

competitors without really making its own life any better that's most companies over a certain size. which in economics is a company that sucks the blood out of defenseless competitors without really making its own life any better. That's most companies over a certain size. Fanacethesia, which is being put to sleep by people complaining about refereeing decisions on a football phone. Yesemism, which is doing something that you think you should do, even though you know we'll have absolutely f*** all impacts whatsoever. For example, recycling a tin can, signing a petition to demand more ethical oil exploration

practices by global oil giants in developing countries. That kind of thing. That's where Obyx, obviously, it's got to be Jewish term. Obps, but it's about with an F, not a V that short for obfuscation. Given that we have both elections coming in both the UK and the US. Oppenheimlich, which is to save something at the last moment,

only to unleash something far, far worse. I like that one. My apologise, that's his belated post-imperial acceptance that changing the names of places and drawing borders randomly on maps doesn't always turn out tremendously well. And musical atable, which is something that can be turned into a musical, which is apparently every single f***ing thing that has ever existed. That section in the bin. **Laughing** **Clock sound** Top story this week. War is over for a little bit.

Four days per se. Don't worry, human suffering fans. War will once again not be over in just four days time. Today as we recorded is day one of a four day ceasefire. Did we ever finalize the language on? Is it a pause, a ceasefire, a cease trosity, or a T-interval T-shirt for temporary bragging hostilities? We'll let history be the judge of that. It's some...

The last couple of months, ever since Hamas perpetrated its terrorist abominations, have been an even more difficult time than usual to be on the, I wish people would stop killing each other and learn to live in harmony, even whilst I also acknowledge how difficult that may be to achieve politically end of the political cease or when it comes to the Middle East. Mark, you've not been on the bugle since the year the start of this latest flare up in this, well, crisis that began pretty much after God span his globe and said, yep, that bit. Is there any optimism from the fact that there is at least this little microglimmer of light? No, I'm not all that optimistic. I think you're quite right. It is probably more like a

teen to or then they'll wring a bell when it's five minutes from the end and then the girl go back to the commentary. Oh they're coming out again, here come all the drones and there's the Israeli defence force. Yeah there is some optimism, you're maintaining about this in the first few days after it happened. It just seemed that if you were off the view that slaughtering civilians who had gone to a music festival was horrible and bombing hospitals was also horrible that was an extremist point of view. Most people in the world, I mean still not 76% of people in Britain think that a ceasefire is the thing that they all just stop killing each other, so with optimistic that only 24% of the British population think no, I'm enjoying you sluttering children. That's quite chirpy, isn't it?

I guess so. The exchange of not enough hostages for not enough ceasefire is simultaneously a very impressive bit of international diplomatic relations and, depressingly inadequate, given the sort of five-dimensional depth of the conflict that is going on in that area, which is to say these like irreconcilable differences about things like whose house this is that stretch across geography, time, and apparently into consensus reality.

But I find the ceasefire itself sort of depressing because it just means that you could not, you know, like, what if we just didn't, turns out to be an option, whereas, you know, you sort of faced with this horrible conflict and it feels Whereas, you know, you sort of faced with this horrible conflict and it feels so, you feel so helpless to it that it could ever possibly be wound up in any way that would make anybody happy. And then they're just like, oh, we can stop for four days. Yeah, it's like that the, the, the, the Christmas, Christmas Day football match in the First World War. The first Christmas of the First World War, 1914. There was a, you know, a ceasefire for Christmas day. They played 1914. There was a ceasefire for Christmas day.

They played football. There was a controversial offside decision and it took four more years of fighting to put forward and calm down. Well, that's football, I think, more than anything. The AR have only just run with a decision. If those of you who've not aware of it, the Middle East or as I assume it's known,

Alice, if you live in Australia, the Middle Northwest is of course the old stomping ground of biblical supersolab, such as slow travel pioneer Moses, magician Rackonter and escapologist Jesus Christ, former MMA star Goliath and token romantic interest, Mary. And like I said, I find it hard to be optimistic because we're conditioned from childhood to want stories to have happy endings. That's why we don't have children's books like The Lion, The Witch and The Dunkin' Pond, The Typhoid who came to tea, The

Very Hungry Cannibal, The Snuffalo, Marjorie Taylor, Green and The Chocolate Factory, 14 Remaining Dalmatians, you've got a gently introduced children to the concept of mortality, but it has to be handled a bit more sensitively. And Winnie the Pootin. But we don't have books like that because we've searched for happy narrative, but reality seldom provides the kind of endings that we're taught to want from childhood. And I guess the best we can hope for in the Middle East is, and they all lived happily ever after for a maximum of 96 hours. It's Winnie the Putin, like instead of not wearing pants he just does a wear of shirt.

Covid inquiry news now. Well here in the United Kingdom we have, well for some weeks now, been enjoying, is that the right term? No. The official inquiry into how the government dealt with COVID. Mark, as a long time supporter of the Conservative Party and died in the Wooden Blazer adherent to Fatsura at Social and Economic Policy, it must have been very hard for you to watch your heroes turn out, not just have feet of clay, but have feet of clumsily modelled, incompetently fired, probably corrupt, shit covered clay. How have you dealt with this thing? Well, so much of the British news channels have been saying these are the co-incorris

such as, it just extraordinary. The revelations have been quite remarkable. Despite the fact that all through the lockdown, everyone was going, I haven't got f**king clothes. And they were just sort of a forest john said would be at the time coming on television every day, saying, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, really, I really, really, I really, I really, I really, I really, really, I really, I really, really, I really, really, I really, I really, I really, really, I really, really, I really, I really, I really, I really, really, I really, really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, really, I really, really, I really, I really, really, I really, really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, really, I really, really, I really, I really, really, I really, really, I really, really, I really, really, I really, I really, I really, really, I really, I really, I really, I really, I really, down from three to nine which shows that it's you must you must go to word but are not permitted to travel there and you you must fly but this is not within six feet or birds and the maximum number of committees in a rule is not so if you find yourself in a rule. You must leave immediately. Two people have committed in any degree of latitude. So, so before you go to the kitchen, you must check with Morocco. And that. And anybody could have said, right, this is just a go-kloat. And man,

go-kloat, you just stand there every day. I feel sorry for him. In front of the scientists, he'd be asked a question like, do you think that the new variant has maybe a capacity by lots of you speaking to invade other parts of the anatomy? And Matt Angle was standing there, like I would be if I suddenly got a jaw in a tight quick fit,

if someone was going, what's the PR312 setting on this whole rare? I'm not just being stood there going, oh, um, um, is it the purple one? And, and so then he f**ked off to Australia to earn 400,000, as a result of the majority of the stuff would have been alright, and Dick, every night had gone, just as he was about to put his end in a box of scorpions. Normally we would give you, we would do to get more goggles for this, but I'm afraid we've run out a protective equipment, and all of them were passing off the PPE contract for billions of pounds to people who live next door and they're all a thester, and people who live next door and there are, and there's this stuff, and people who were f***ing at a degree and knowing f*** all about making PPL equipment, and in one case, Matt

and Cuck's bloody landlord, and now the big BBC said, who would have thought that they were doing for every body, and then all had your jobs, so even Dominic Cummings, and people who remember was breaking all the rules by driving to a place called Barnard Cups or hundreds of miles. And he said he was doing it because he wanted to check his eyes while working properly. And would deliver it if anyone would do it if you think your eyes are working properly. You get all your family putting in a car and go, let's drive 200 miles and if we cause a multi car pile up in pillow to people, then it's key in my eyes

and it's looking at it. And then you go to the opposition. Then you go to the top position, all of this. But even so, I don't think we were aware of the scale of just a mental and so Boris Johnson it turns out in at the start of the Coliseum it said, isn't Covid just nature's way of dealing with the elderly? Ah!

Rishi Sirek, a call to Dominic Cunny, said, shouldn't we just let people die, whether we did say that or not, I don't know, but Dominic Cummings claims he didn't even do that. Or they ate all of them before of this. None of them, Patrick Valance, he was the chief advisor at the time, because the government said that they didn't have a clue, the play come, the Boris Johnson in one cabin at me, instead we should have a full on lockdown like France, and then a minute later said we should have no lockdown at all, and just let it rip. So just like, look at toddler, let's go to the seaside. Oh shall we? No, I hate the seaside. Just like all of them, utterly, utterly useless.

So the one thing they did know is that having told everybody that they should lock down and under no circumstances go anywhere with anyone else at all, they then immediately went into the upstairs room at Downing Street with about 120 of them and had a f***ing night, a big suddenly like where they were playing drum and bugs and shagging each other, hasten, wheelbarrow loads of drink and the sick go each other and get in buckets of cold and spray in each other with it. I brought a dog and a home and then saying they didn't do it and then boys jumped to go, no, the film show worked conclusive because maybe I'm not me, maybe I'm surely better than you. I know, just unbeckoned by the evil, how they're not all in jail. My favourite part of it was the kind of the turn of dominant comings to sort of whistleblower and revealing all of these horrible conversations and these horrible things that people had

said and these horrible strategies that were tabled without ever mentioning how much of it was like, oh, and that was my idea, by the way. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. This just one after that. And also the language of them all. They're all sort of calling each other ask, what the fuck?

Which shit adds to the moronic stupid, all this sort of thing. Unbelievable. And poor Chris Whittie was the scientific bloke. We were about to stand there every day and say that this is what we feel that the current situation is likely to lead to and that the slides and it was a scientist and the other study all and then he would say all that and

that's why we're advising this and then the government would do exactly the opposite and go go and then they would go the government will go we're all through the slogan was we are following the science but they were following the science at all. They might have said, we are following the science and that's why everyone over the age of 70, we're going to actually be following that mid-summer film. Everyone over the 70 has to claw in up to the top of the gauage and jump off into a bath with an electric fire in it because they're too old and this is nature's way of dealing with the only good with following the site. Chris Whittie must feel like a surgeon who's about to offer to give it someone a hot bypass and then Boris Johnson comes in and goes, give me that time to add what I think we should poor Creasuke, all these liver and fill

his kidneys with pickled onions and then he just act to do it and then three years later go, I was aware at the time that there was certain concerns about the government's approach with regard to the pickled onion. I always thought that nature's way of dealing with the elderly was making them inclined to vote Tory, their own natural predator. It was remarkable that they were killing off the virile people who put them in pale, but I suppose that shows just it. Oh, they're in. That's a good killing us all. Let's come from again. I'll be honest, I mean, the Covid, it's not my thing as a drama. I've tried to follow it, but my main problem, and I have this with a lot of the kind of big

TV box sets, is that I find the central character just deeply implausible and unlikable on too many levels. In this case, it's Boris Johnson. Who was described as bamboozled by science, which would have been the title of dancers with wolves if it had been starring Boris Johnson instead of Kevin Costner. He also said this, on the subject of suggesting that old people should be allowed to die, he said they've had a good innings, which as a cricket fan, you know, I never like hearing that terminology misused because what he's basically saying is they've had a long innings and it needs to be sort of means tested in a way because if you're 75,

but you've lived most of your life struggling to get by and are just hoping to have a few years of relative stability to enjoy some of the things in life you never able to do before. That's not a good innings. So therefore you should qualify for healthcare. But if say you're 60, minted have been on three holidays a year for most of your life, play golf twice a week, eat out in fancy restaurants and own a seldom used antique Victorian sex chair. That is a good innings. And therefore you should be the one jumping off the roof or whatever.

Whatever was there you were suggesting. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, was described as having a habit of saying things that were not true, which is not ideal as health secretary, given that health is at least partially related to science in which facts and truth are quite useful. And not harmlessly, not saying sort of harmless things that weren't true, such as did you know Florence Nightingale once performed a tracheotomy on a leopard cub whilst blindfolded, or you could cure months by standing on your head for an hour, singing these boots and made for walking. But actually damaging life, so that had an impact on the public. But anyway, such, I think the important thing, though, is to learn how we might do things better next time.

Are there lessons that we can now do better? This is a difficult thing for us here in Britain, because we've seldom ever had to learn lessons, because we've never got anything wrong through history. That's just how things are when you're British. But I don't know what lessons you think we should be learning, anything wrong through history, that's just how things are when you're British. But you know, I don't know what lessons you think we should be learning, either of you. What do you think should be the learnings from this crisis?

I think we should learn to carry on much as we've been doing. Oh, good. I think we should, whenever the scientists in Italy and France, a scientist in governments in Italy and France and China, or effectively carry out a way of turbing a new epidemic, we should call them all foreign sweats and do the very opposite. And then go, oh shit, everyone in the caro is being wheeled out under a blanket. And I think another thing we should learn is to be careful what we wish for. Sorry, not wish, vote. And I think

a good rule of thumb is if you wouldn't trust someone to look after one or more of your teddy bear girlfriend economy, lunch or democracy, for f**k's sake, don't make them prime minister. I think that's probably a pretty sound rule of thumb. No, I don't know. All these people who were going, well, I mean, he does seem to be, rather someone who didn't pay attention to detail and was rather more concerned with his own well-being and his finances. And, um, I just didn't realize he was like that. Well, to be fair, I mean,'s democracy working for once, it laid those cards

firmly on the table over decades in public life, and he was merely giving the nation what it voted for. I would say, you know, their mothers could have told you they were like this except all of their mothers outsourced the work to an any. It's like it all f***ed. People being sacked and then unsacked news now and Alice, you have been covering the world of tech gazillionaires for pretty much as long as you've been on this podcast and how years, when was it, 2017, I think? You're first on, well, that's got that. Doesn't time fly. Bring us up to date with the latest,

the latest exciting news from the crazy world of top level tech. I mean, this is such exciting news that if we had just waited a week to see what would happen, would have not have been news at all because someone got fired and then re-hired back into the same position. So if we'd just held fire, we wouldn't have needed all of the op-eds on what happened. Out of the blue seemingly on Friday, open AICO, Sam Altman was fired by the board of directors and then after much scandal and controversy, playing social media and normal media, he staged a counter-coup. He mobilized hundreds of employees, including, incredibly enough,

the original coup leader, and he won the support of all the investors, including Microsoft against the company itself, and got rehired in the same position, which has got to be awkward for the people who stabbed him in the back. If anyone is not sure what OpenAI is, it's the parent company of chat GPT and sort of in the front, in the forefront of the tech world at the moment. The problem with AI at the moment is that, so one of the proposed reasons that he was fired

was that he wasn't taking safety seriously enough that this possible AI could be a threat to humanity and that he's pushing ahead for commercial gain without considering the potential implications of this world changing technology. But the real problem with AI is that what we call AI isn't what you would call AI if you were trying to describe what AI is meant to be.

So the thing that we used to call AI and sci-fi, we now call AGI or artificial general intelligence because what we're now we call AI is not actually AI. It's sort of a sophisticated mash-up machine that's being sold as the future of technology and humanity by people whose favorite thing is selling the thing they haven't invented yet. So he's been hailed as a genius mainly for stuff

that he hasn't done yet, but says he'll happen soon. And no one's willing to lose the possibility that he might still do it so far. I think the market has been very credulous about the claims of these tech pros because the future seems cool and no one wants to miss investing in the next better mouse trap. The problem is that the tech industry as a whole does not want to build a better mouse trap. They want to pitch a mouse trap app that they dreamed up while micro-dosing absent in the desert to get VC funding within six months and then retire having built nothing but taking the credit for fundamentally disrupting the mouse trap industry using an AI enabled

crypto blockchain, which you can use to mint unique mouse coins. Each coin is stably tethered to one individual dead mouse's DNA. And you ask them what the core service of their app is and it turns out, it's just a taxi that you call and then they drive by and throw an angry cat in your window. And then you rank the cat by customer service, general fluffiness and mouse killing ability. But now the apps are only being used by Nazis and in cells to throw cats through the windows of women, they don't like because the developers did not think through any of the possible ways

in which their service could be misused. And now, cats with low fluffiness ratings are killing themselves because the apps given them a self-esteem problem. Right. And that's the take-in to scare around. Oh, I see. No, I understand. Yeah, I think I both understand it more and less.

Thanks. Also, I think with, I mean, that might be the longest sentence in the history of the bugle. And I think Mark's putting a few challenges for that over the years, and you know, that is a hotly contested title, to be honest. So. Thank you.

I'd feel it will be all right. I know it will do all of these things in the end, and it'll be both dangerous and amazing and all of that but at the moment is it, does it do much? Are you alright? No, it sort of gets, I mean it aggregates enormous amounts of data and then spits them back out. Yeah. In a sort of a information slurry. Yeah, so if you tell it a load of stuff and then ask it something, it will tell you one of the things back that you told it and then then we'll go, it's amazing. Well, I guess it was also taking all this stuff and then splurging something back.

So essentially it's at the baby stage. Yes. So I mean, you've got to be careful because eventually when you have teenage AI, it will be, I mean, it will be so. Yeah, you'll ask it. You'll say, can you write me? Can you write me a speech, please, for my presentation at the Diagnostics Technology Conference, and it'll go,

why the f*** should I? Thank you. Thank you. Sure. Let's move on now to Rats News. Alice, as we speak, in Australia. And you have been, well Australia is in the grip of a plague of rats, that classic trope of humanity that seems to occur throughout history. Are you going to be the pide piper that removes the rats from Australia? Well, I mean, I hope so. These rats are washing up on thousands of rats, both dead and alive,

washing up on beaches in Queensland, which is about to move to a small coastal town in Queensland, so I can only hope that this is going to pass me by. Look, everyone's horrified at this prospector. We had a mouse plague not so long ago. It was pretty awful. And now it's a mixed mouse and rat plague, and everyone's really horrified. But I think from one perspective, you can see this as a kind of a wildlife racism, like because it's rats, it's way more disgusting. But you have to really really rethink this. You know, if it was a plague of cute wallabies who were driving your ducks mad or stripping the wiring out of your car, or thousands of dead koalas washing up on the beach, you know, you're right, it's still disgusting. I'm going to go out a little limb here and say a plague of anything is bad news. But on the bright side rats in fishing towns can only mean one thing,

which is the launch of a charming children's book about pirate rats, which I have an exclusive extract from right here. He's skitted here across the deck. He put the hairs up on your neck. He plundered gold and also cheesed. The pirate rat was hard to please. One leg of wood, three legs of leg, one eye a hook, one ear a peg. He played upon a pirate flute, a song of stealing pirate loot. The problem is that every time a parent lands on his shoulder, it carries him off to feed his children. So the lead rat has to keep being replaced by similar looking rats.

Oh, but not yet, probably. The cave on the production process is intense. I guess the real concern for those of you who've filmed the fish in Arnos is that you could have a ratnado if there's a, because if you lost angeles, was struck by that very serious shotnado a few years ago. There's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a badgers or something if there was a plague of badgers or giraffes or no, like in Laiga giraffes, they get in through the bloody, they come out through the skirting. Yeah, you open what you thought was a harmless box of cereal and they scuttle out on the floor. Oh yeah, that they come one of those, his head's mixed stuck through the cat flat and now it goes right across the living room. The clamber over it just to get out in the kitchen. Other rats news now.

Rats in space. Science has been experimenting on rats as it tends to do and it has discovered through experimenting on rats that space travel could lead to a rectile dysfunction. Now, we have had our quarrels with scientific research on the show at various points over the past 16 and a bit years. But I think this might top it all. That here we are, we have some scientists who add some rats and presumably they're bossed into them right. I'm giving you some rats. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but there we are. They're rats. People find them hard to warm too, so we can experiment

on them and get away with it. I'm going to leave you alone for three months in the laboratory with these rats and I want you to do some research to benefit humanity. Off you go, three months later comes back in. What have you got? Cure from malaria, new drug that means you can live in 50 degree heat with almost no oxygen, that would be useful, at least a fetching new shade of eyeshadow. Oh yes boss, we found out that rats can't get rat boners if you blast them with a cosmic ray gun. Great, well done guys. Let me just call the f***ing Nobel committee right now. That rats can't get boners in space. That is the headline story from this news. And I guess it does illustrate a lot about researching to space travel.

Because we all know why this is a concern and why the research is being done into whether or not You can get a boner in space because The space where everyone's to the stars what well because our space race between our heroic billionaires is Basically fundamentally a race between the world's richest most powerful people to be the first human to Swap an alien that they all want to be the first people to be the first human to swap an alien. They all want to be the first musk Zuckerberg, Bezos, Oliver, Jockovich, and Barley. They all want to be the first to enjoy astroconal conjuglements with whatever extra terrestrial hotsters we

encounter in the Nether regions of space. That's the only explanation for this research. And you would think that an erection would be easier to achieve when there was no gravity. Surely, you're not to have one, but in floats, isn't it? I'm for this. I'm for every kind of achievement that you would attempt to get women with being negatively correlated with penis function. Like, if you're like the moment you make more than like 10 million dollars, I reckon you should be chemically castrated. I feel like every politician who gets a position of power over anyone should immediately have like one-third of their balls chopped off. I feel like this should be the penalty for success. And so obvious, but will Pierre Starmad put that in his manifesto?

Well, he just won't commit to anything that might even be slightly controversial. Obviously, you know, there's something sort of glamorous and exciting about science and that sense that you are helping stretch the bounds of knowledge and improve the states of humanity, but when you find yourself Trying to get a rat to roll over onto its back to see if it's got the horn. You must think Maybe I should have done something else. Well, they don't tickle it with a little cheatsy What do they do? I don't know if it's a rat porn I don't even rats would like rat porn would they? No rats are you joke off to gerbil porn. That is all the racist. Very controversial piece of

gerbil porn doing the rounds in high school during the early 2000s in which a gerbil put a very small figurine of Richard Girford's house. Yeah, family show, Alice. Family show. Of course, it might not be the cosmic rays of the microgravity that stop the rats getting boba's. It could be just that it, with it, on the, the gerbil news. Sorry. Well, I expect to be hearing from both Richard's gear and the gerbil's lawyers.

What's up, Frank, in the next... ...and we're going to just quickly look at the cricket well cut final that happened last weekend in which India won the runner's up prize in the two team final against Australia. And that was not how it was supposed to end. What was it? Six or seven weeks of cricket leading to the final in the Narendra Modi Stadium, the stadium in our Metabad that was named after Narendra Modi by Narendra Modi the day before it opened. And it was all set to be one of the greatest moments of sporting propaganda. But India, unfortunately,

for Narendra Modi, lost. I mean, they are a sensationally good cricket team. They won 10 in a row to reach the final nine in the group stage, then the semifinal. You don't need to be a professional cricket stastatician to know that they were one of the top three most statistically dominant teams in the World Cup group stage ever in men's World Cup cricket You don't need to be a professional cricket statistician because I am one and I've just told you that but It did seem the India winning in front of Their prime minister and a stadium their prime minister had named after their prime minister It seemed that was written in the stars

But unfortunately there are a f*** of a lot of stars, and if you look hard enough with the right telescope in the right place, you can find anything written in the stars, including the words, ah, f***ing typical Australia, they always come good when it matters. And that's what happened in this case, Mark. It was, I mean, it did see more the way through

that India were too good for everyone, but such is, such is sport. Yeah, well, well, you said, well, the India were two good for everyone, but such is sport. Yeah, well, you said, well, the far as everyone gave, and of course, a similar thing happened, winning the World Cup final at Badminton that was played at the List Trust stadium that she named after herself. And it just seemed inevitable that England's Badminton Super-emones would come to, but the England's badminton supreme owners would come to them, but they didn't. And they're not only that, but she actually bankrupted the leisure center. It feels like the real story here that a lot of people have been focusing on is the

bad sportsmanship, not of the players, but of the fans for not sticking it through to watch their team get thoroughly trounced. If you really were in it for the love of the game, then you would have stuck around and seen your defeat and given due credit to the honorable winners. But it feels like the fans don't know how to go about their business anymore. That is something in England traditionally that you would applaud the opposition, if only just to keep warm, because for a start,

certainly when I was growing up, there was basically nothing to applaud England for. So you had to applaud the opposition, otherwise you would just slowly freeze the death under a top ball. Just the sort of, the, the comical sort of acceptance of the fee, I've watched England lose to Iceland

in the Euro Championships several years ago on a beach in Brighton in front of a big screen. There must be about three, four thousand people there. And by the end of it all I think is fair say most people found it hilarious. I think other countries, that's one thing other countries could learn from the English. By the end everyone was sort of like, you know, we don't equal us now I think other countries, that's one thing other countries could learn from English, but I think everyone was sort of like, you know, we don't equal ourselves now because this is funny. Right, that brings us to the end of this week's Bugle.

Alice, anything to plug? Apart, of course, from the Gugle, where this week you can hear more about the Open AI Hirings and Farings. Yes, Goggle, the sister podcast to the bugle is still available every week with me and unbound.com. If you write in Alice Fraser, you can pre-order the Dancilla Guard reader, which I have finished writing. Congratulations. Now it's up to them as to when it will end up in your hot

little hands, but it's available for pre-orderorder unbound.com and type in Alice Fraser. Oh, excellent. Mark, well you can come and see me having Keema therapy at some left for the second week. And then we're taking it on tour over the year if that works. I'll be in shrews, we've gone past, you know, to hospitals all over Britain and also I have support, some places, people haven't been diagnosed yet, you know, just starting out, I've been spot cancer people. It's always good to give them a chance. Oh, but I'm doing, I'm doing a, it's a put, this is all really great with the fact that this goes all right. Then, um, up until town, my series will be on again at some point when I'm able to do them.

But I have been to Margate already this week and I'm looking around there and then I'm going to go to Stokesoon. I don't know what the other ones will be yet. And your podcast? Oh yes. What the f*** is going on? Do listen to that as well. Oh, also I do a weekly writers meeting on my Patreon,

which you can currently get for a dollar a month. Actually, I do two weekly writers meetings that you can currently get for a dollar a month, because I don't know how business works. Patreon.com slash Alice Fraser, two hourly weekly writers meetings for a dollar a month. That's half a dollar a meeting. Yeah. I'm going to have a baby. Don't forget to put your tickets for the Bugle Live tour in March.

In numerous venues around the UK, including Glasgow, Norwich, Birmingham, Salford Stroke Manchester, there's a London date in June the UK, including Glasgow, Norwich, Birmingham, Salford Stroke Manchester, there's a London date in June, and some other dates that I can't remember offhand. So I'm going to just leave that mysteriously in the air for you to find out for yourself, tickets available. via thebugelpochast.com or elsewhere on the internet

to join the Bugle Voluntary subscription scheme and to make a one-off or a current contribution to help keep this show free flourishing and independent go to the buglepodcast.com premium level subscribers get exclusive access to the monthly ask Andy show where I answer your questions and we are shortly going to be recording a bugle vinyl record for our premium voluntary subscribers as well so we are embracing the future of technology. We'll be back next week with Stuart Lee and Felicity Ward until then goodbye.

Hello, Bueglers, it's producer Chris here. Before we get on with the show, please forgive me. I would like to very quickly plug the show I make with my friend and adventurer, Richie Firth. It's called Richie Firth Travel Hacker, and it's back for a 6 season next week. It involves me or Richie or both of us traveling all over the place, trying to keep our shit together whilst we visit interesting and exciting parts of the world. It's a nice bit of escapism and I urge you please subscribe to Richie Firth, TravelHacker. Give it a try. If you hate it, tell me. try if you hate it, tell me.