The Bugle - Radioactive Toddler Waves Arms Around

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Love Sci Fi and Fantasy? Discover our new show Realms Unknown: https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/realms-unknownTech Bro's now run the world, until their Chinese Techrivals outtech them. This may be why they are getting into politics? We explore a bunch of stories where tech and politics collide, and look at the impact on the kids. Spoiler: they are not alright.Also, Andy shares his 'fun' travels.Like us? We only exist because you make it happen, support us here: https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateFeaturing:Andy ZaltzmanAlice FraserAnuvab PalProduced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh hello strangers, I'm Alice Fraser, your guide to the galaxy's goblins, dungeons and dystopias. We'll be hurling ourselves into an all-weekly hero's journey through realms unknown into the dark but sensual heart of all our favourite speculative fictions. We'll navigate the wild realms created by brilliant authors, filmmakers, game designers and more. New episodes drop every week on your podcast app or on YouTube. Do not resist the call to adventure, Chosen One. Join me for Realms Unknown.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Buglers, and welcome to issue 4329 of The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world with me, Andy Zoltzman. We are another week further into the history of humanity yet again. The latest plot twists have been a bit predictable and annoying, but that's so off in the way with series that have gone on for so long. Just gratuitous schlock horror squirm inducing nonsense to desperately try to keep people interested enough to make it to the next ad break. To discuss this latest episode in Earth, the human years, I'm joined by two locals, two planet

Earth, two veterans of the second and third millenniums, both controversial in their own different ways. Two people, I mean the Millennium's not the people, two people who've skillfully managed not to allow themselves to become species-sundering plutocrats or resentment-mongering politicians. Congratulations to both of them for their dignified refusal to go down those poison political paths. Firstly from Australia, it's Alice Fraser. Hello, Alice. Hello, Andy. I am starting to suspect that whoever's writing this season of Earth hasn't planned an ending yet.

It's that thing where they just keep hitting you with twist after twist after twist and you're like, well, I'm waiting, but I feel like they're just trying to write. I think they're going to try and write their way out of it and I don't think they're going to succeed. There's too many plot holes. Well to, well, who better to bring in to discuss that than someone who professionally works on films, dealing with scripts and plots from India. Anubhav Pal. This is the world at D where it's free play terms. We've done away with the protagonist.

We're now living in a planet where we don't need a protagonist. It's a planet of antagonists. It's fair enough. I'm speaking to you right now from the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat. And it's it's the world is reaching an interesting place. I was here for two nights for to watch a British band called Coldplay, who apparently were very famous in your country in 2005. They sold out a massive cricket stadium, Andy, Alice, for two nights straight, 100,000 people, world's largest cricket stadium, one Andy that you're quite familiar with. And in the

middle of the concert, 200,000 Indians going crazy, the lead singer of the band apologized for colonialism. And I don't know what to expect now, Andy. Now, this is not in screenplay terms, an element of surprise. This is more an element of shock. I'm half expecting the British pop band, Right Said Fred, who had a 1991 hit called I'm Too Sexy to do a live concert from the Taj Mahal seeking forgiveness for ruining a perfectly good biryani recipe. Well, I mean, I guess, you know, in terms of belated apologies, I don't know if it counts as an official national apology if it's delivered by the country's biggest selling rock group?

I don't know. I think that's as close as we're ever gonna get, Anubhav. You're not gonna get anything from like a head of state or a prime minister. So Coldplay is basically some sort of, I don't know, in between state between prime minister and monarch. Maybe that's as good as we're gonna get. I'd like an apology from Coldplay for colonizing the airwaves back in 2012. I think so. And also what's very clever is India is a big market now for live entertainment. So if British artists keep apologizing and making a ton of money while they're at it, it's sort of like the new empire, isn't it? Because it was always about money. And now there's good cash and apologizing.

Great. Well, I mean, this, I think this is a huge step forward for humanity. And you put it in those terms, if we realize that there is serious money to be made from apologizing for historical wrongs. apologizing for historical wrongs. Not only could we cure some of the festering resentments from the tides of history, but we could also fix the entire global economy. I think this might be the most positive thing that's ever come out of the bugle. I think we are genuinely on a path to a happier more equitable planet, purely from the fact that you can now make shitloads of money from apologizing for historical wrongs. Yeah, I mean no one expected the reparations to go the wrong way round. Well, I've had a curious week since since we last bugled. We recorded the news quiz last week on Thursday in Dundee

in Scotland as Storm Aowyn hoved its way across the Atlantic. It then got into full hoving mode and hoved the shit out of Ireland, Scotland, Northern England, meaning that I was then stranded in Dundee on Friday, so I couldn't do my Leeds tour show, apologies to anyone who had tickets for that, it's been rearranged for the 11th of March and your original tickets will remain valid or you can get a refund if you can't come. Then I had to get to Nottingham on the Saturday, but thanks to, I don't know quite how to describe this in terms of the infrastructure of the nation, absolutely decades of incompetence and under investment. My attempts to get from Dundee to Nottingham involved all the trains from Dundee being

cancelled. So me and my BBC colleagues got a taxi from Dundee to Edinburgh. Then all the trains from Edinburgh appeared to be running on time. So I got on a train from Edinburgh, it got half an hour out of Edinburgh, it then stopped just outside a place called Dunbar in Scotland. It turned out there was a bit of plastic on the line, you had to wait half an hour for someone to clear away the bit of plastic, it went on again. And then they found out there was a f****** tree in the way. The tree had blown up and they hadn't bothered checking this

before setting the train out from Edinburgh. The train was then sent back to Edinburgh where my BBC colleagues were waiting for the following train which had sensibly never left. We then hired a car and the only car they had left was a tiny, tiny car, a tiny car and it had to have four adults and about six suitcases in and we had to drive from, well they had to go all the way to London. We went from Dundee to Nottingham. I pulled up outside the theatre in Nottingham three minutes before they were due to open the doors to the audience. I managed to get the gig done. But it was like being in a metaphor for the state of the UK, that train, that left Edinburgh, went pointlessly for a while, stopped for a bit, went pointlessly on again, as if it

was making progress even though it was in fact getting further away from where it was eventually going to end up which was back where it started. So it was I mean in many ways a joyous experience being actually within a performance metaphor for the state of the country. Andy I think you might have just helped someone solve their A-levels maths question. Yes. Yes. If Andy leaves on a train from Edinburgh, but he's doing so in 2025 on the LNER service, how long does it take him to get back to Edinburgh? The answer was about an hour and 40 minutes. In terms of storm Iowin, it was a huge storm, one of the biggest weather systems to hit the British Isles in many years. I'm not saying it definitely was divine retribution for sending Liz Truss and Nigel Farage the other way across

the Atlantic for the inauguration, but it's also definitely not divine retribution for sending Truss and Farage across the ocean or for even retribution for setting trust and forage across the ocean or for even you know retribution for backing down and allowing the flawed pipe dream of American independence to get out of control and lead us directly to the Trumpo musket Zuckerberg in world we now exist in traps like a Pharaoh in a pyramid of our own making. Anyway, the recording on the 28th of January, I'm safe safely back in London on this day in 189696 a historic day in

in motoring history in British cultural history Walter Arnold from East Peckham a little village in Kent not far from where I grew up in Tom Ridge Wells Became the first person to be convicted of speeding in the UK He was fined one shilling plus costs for speeding at 280 miles an hour in modern day equivalent. It was four times the speed limit, which is 70 miles an hour now. It was two miles an hour then, the speed limit.

Walter Whizzy wheels as he was known clattered on at eight miles an hour. Breakneck speed, the local traffic police managed to chase him down on a bicycle after a five mile low speed chase. Presumably the bicycle was traveling at the modern equivalent of at least 281 miles an hour. Of course, there were no flashing blue lights in those days. He had to the police police officer had to hold up a gas lamp surrounded by miniature blue tinted chiffon curtains, which rotated on a mechanical spindle, of course, and no siren, he had to ride along with a swan under each

arm squeezing like a bagpipe to make the now traditional... On the 29th of January 1594, the mathematician John Napier dedicated his plane discovery of the whole revelation of St John to King James VI of Scotland. It was a mathematical statistical analysis of the book of Revelation which predicted that the end of the world would happen in either the year 1688 or the year 1700. We now know that he was probably wrong. I mean, basically, I mean, I work with statistics, admittedly, not biblical statistics. And, you know, I'm a professional statistician, sort of hashtag, not all statistics. But look, I've crunched the numbers from the book of revelations. And basically, what

he was doing was the 16th century equivalent of expected gold and modern soccer coverage, I think, I can exclusively reveal that the end of the world will in fact happen in, hang on, let me get the excel spreadsheet up here, oh it says 2016, but maybe that's just the start of the process rather than the actual final end itself, anyway we'll let him do it. Napier was wrong of course, what happened in fact in 1688 was the first documented mention of the balalaika and in 1700 the first documentary evidence of the existence of the piano, so I don't know what quite he got wrong but it appeared

that he was finding out dates of the first mentions of musical instruments my spreadsheet also suggests that 2025 will see the first provable evidence of the existence of the electric walriff own a brass wind instrument made out of a walruses that can't be right, can it? Family show. I need to double-check. As always, a section of The Bugle is going straight in the bin. This week we have more realistic kids books. I think we had Winona the Wildebeest goes for a Grey's last year.

More realistic kids books have come out to show children what really happens in the world, including Henrietta Herring and the inescapable trawler fleet of doom. Also, why can't granny remember my name? Terrence the Turkey's Lonely Christmas, Billy Badger versus the four lane motorway, the tiger who came to repossess the house due to poor government regulation of the short term loan industry, and Louisa May the laboratory mouse and the ethically questionable range of budget facial cosmetic products. All fantastic books for your young children to help them teach them about what really happens on this planet.

Of course, Alice, you've got a book coming out, it seems a good time to plug it. Yes, a passion for passion will be out in the UK on the 6th of February, we've got a launch party on the 5th of February. But I shouldn't tell you about that because it's already sold out. But we are having a live stream at 7 p.m. on the 6th because I thought it would be nice to do a thing. Thebeaglepodcast.com for the live stream on the 6th of February. And then I'll be on tour in the UK going to all different places. Currently, there is no date for London, so you'd better take chance your luck on the train at this point. If you want to see the show, A Passion for

Passion, which is about the book, A Passion for Passion, which is available, as I said, online right now. Put it in your eye holes, please. Alice, for the Instagram generation, you know, who have an attention span of 12 seconds, if you had to summarize the book, what would you say was about? I would say it is about romance novels and it is good for people who like romance novels and also for people who have no idea why people like romance novels, which is to say it's for everybody. Stick it in your eye holes. Top story this week, Elon Musk is a Nars-see. Let me emphasize what I just said there.

He's a Nars-see, which means that he's like a cross between Nars-border, the legendary South African fly-off who Musk would have definitely watched playing rugby when he was growing up in South Africa, and a well-meaning tsetse fly. Let me emphasize that legally. This follows, well, we recorded last week as the inauguration was happening and so we sort of covered some of the things that were said but not everything what happened afterwards. And Elon Musk at an event on the inauguration day, he put his hand on his chest and then thrust his hand outwards in a manner, obviously, you know, he's denied it was a Nazi salute and he did it twice in quick succession just to prove that it definitely wasn't a Nazi salute because he did the same

thing twice. I'm not quite sure what the logic is. But it was unquestionable. I don't think you can deny that it was unquestionably the kind of salute that someone might make if they were an actor playing the part of a fascist leader in a film about a, let me emphasize, entirely fictional nation based on 1930s Nazi Germany. Is that fair, Alice? Look, Andy, I think what he was trying to prove was definitively the mathematical equation that two wrongs do not make a Reich. And he's either a Nazi or he's just hoping to provoke people into thinking he's a Nazi because he wants to ride the wave of 4chan, Pepe-wielding meme lords who are enjoying

the outrage and upset of people who find overt Nazi symbols distasteful. He's trying to get over the reputational hump of being revealed to have paid people to pretend to be good at games for him. I don't know why people are debating this, Andy. The finger tension, the angle of the release. Look, I can make it really simple for you guys. Any salute is a Nazi salute if the person doing the salute is a Nazi.

You don't have to stress out about it at all. I don't know. I don't think we should be worrying about this. Elon Musk isn't going to not do whatever he's planned on doing with the American government. I don't know whether it's cool, chill, relaxing, mere corruption of due process in favor of unregulated, exploitative business practices or step one in a global unification of technologically advanced corporatized populist nation states in the interest of an authoritarian space colonization project so we can mine the stars to make more phones, we will all find out soon enough. I would be a bit disappointed if it were just boring old Nazism, to be honest. I back Musk to have more

entrepreneurial vigor than that. He's probably stolen a better idea from a sci-fi novel. idea from a sci-fi novel. I think there was a film called Nazis in Space. A well-known motion picture. I have a question for both of you. Now, one of the things Elon Musk said is there's no need to keep harping back to the 20th century. And I know, Andy, you like history, and I've been thinking about this for a long time.

What really is the point of history? You know, because... I mean, let's look at the big things of the 20th century. Now, obviously, the Third Reich, the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, the Vietnam War, the partition of India, the Cambodian genocide. Now all of these things by remembering them, what are we learning except not to do these again? And why is that even important? He's bringing up a good point here, don't you think? I mean, I don't know.

Well, yes, I mean, I guess, I've said this many times, I say it in my current live show that the only lesson we learn from history is that we will never ever learn the lessons of history. So why bother even trying? And if it's taking the world's most vocal mobile cancer, the cartoon evil genius of the decade to tell us that, then more fool us. If he didn't want us to be harping back, he should have said we shouldn't guitar back. Come on, harps like 18th century. Yeah, harps. It's too wistful, isn't it? All that harping back.

For the sake of balance, and because I do a lot of work for the BBC, I should point out that there were very long bits in Elon Musk's speech in which he didn't give two things that looked exactly like Nazi salutes in quick succession. So let's remember that as well. And he's dismissed criticism of his hand gestures as quotes, tired. Well, of course it's tired. Everything is tired now. You have exhausted the world Musk. You're like a radioactive toddler. Just calm down. To be fair, it's a really good way to etch a sketch the memory of anything you said in that speech. That's just erasing everything

you said. That arm gesture can just wipe the board clean. And that's all people are focusing on now. I went to that tweet, you know, the X comment, whatever it's called now. I think the comment was the everyone is Hitler attack is so tired. I think that was his point. And very early on, there was one hot emoji under the tweet by one E Hitler. I'm not sure who that is. But he went in there and gave it a heart emoji. So clearly, people agree with him. Yeah.

I mean, of course, we at The Bugle, we like to take people at their word. We are a trusting, open podcast. So let's assume that Musk was right and genuine when he said it was not a Nazi salute. There are innumerable, perhaps even infinite convincing explanations of what he was actually doing, as you say, clearing an Etch A Sketch could be one of them. Maybe demonstrating the optimum trajectory for throwing a modern javelin so that it doesn't dip too quickly. Maybe showing you how to scrape snow

off a car windscreen quick enough that your hand doesn't get cold quickly. Maybe showing you how to scrape snow off a car windscreen quick enough that your hand doesn't get cold if you don't have an actual scraper. Maybe how to remove a large circular glue covered caterpillar that has roosted on your chest pocket quickly and to fix it instead to a passing horse. It could easily have been doing that. Or how to stroke a crocodile that has fallen asleep lying headfirst down on a playground slide firmly enough that you wake the crocodile up so it can move back to something that isn't a playground playground. So I'd ideally leave the playground but not so hard that it gets cross and eat you or maybe it's just one of the dance moves from reach for the stars by S top seven. There's

just so many possible explanations in the the US, the Anti-Defamation League, what a league that is. I think you can watch the Anti-Defamation Playoff soon on various cable channels. I'm working on my Anti-Defamation League fantasy team at the moment. Really hard to narrow it down, isn't it? It's an organization dedicated to combating anti-Semitism and other strands of prejudice, described Musk's arm actions as an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm and that is an early contender for euphemism of the millennium, I think. I know we're just over 25 years in now, but I think it's gonna be tricky to beat. That's gonna be tricky to beat. I'm still stuck Andy with the image of one salute being compared to stroking a reptile and an S Club 7 song.

Bill Gates described Musk's recent actions as, quote, insane shit. Which presumably Musk took as the highest compliment one gazillionaire can pay to another. I mean, that's the opposite of a euphemism. That's so far opposite of a euphemism. I'd call it a mefemism. Bill Gates shouldn't be talking about this sort of stuff. You know what insane shit is? And if Bill Gates in Bill Gates's world is trying to add four columns in Microsoft Excel and getting a circular reference every time. I testify. Oh, my struggles at Microsoft Excel don't get me started on co-pilot the AI bit of word, honestly.

I know it's not really his problem anymore Clippy would be rolling in his grave I think Elon Musk definitely sleeps in a grave but I mean it is that you compare what Gates has famous he's famously spent you know vast amounts of his vastly vastly vast wealth on on various humanitarian projects Musk has chosen to leverage his absurd profit fruits to make the world angrier, more deluded and darker. So I guess that's just different ways of doing everything really. More tech bros news now. And well an article article, an interesting article that you alerted us to about the challenge

Europe is facing in dealing with the the scrotery of tech whiz wankers who basically now run our species, who are facing some tough decisions and crawling compromises to try and curry their their favor. What's just bring us up to date with the latest in this, I don't know, describe it as a battle, a dance? How would you describe it? Well, it's a sort of, yeah, it's a detente, a face off. The EU wants to regulate these tech bros. They don't want to be regulated. The EU wants to encourage tech bros. They need to be wooed. Basically, in an age where tech companies, the leaders of tech companies and their transnational mega corps have more functional power than most governments

as well as the proven power to control information, outpace, overthrow and straight up by those governments while simultaneously disintegrating the fourth estate. We need to ask the question of how can mere regulatory regimes hope to compete? You know, governments are simultaneously trying to woo and control these men who, despite their fragile egotism and general delicacy of temperament, are functionally the embodiment of the corporations they lead. They're like Greek gods with less chill. They have the capacity to control the weather, the night sky with their satellites, and whether

Andrew Tate gets to whisper sweet nothings to your 13 year old son at night until he calls his mother a bitch at the dinner table. But I want to provide a counterpoint here, Andy. Like, is it so bad that men are making money? Like, surely the drive to make money is what has pushed humanity's development forward throughout history from the time that Prometheus stole fire from the gods and then sold it for a dollar a pop and then licensed out his liver on a renewable contract to Eagle Corp. Unlimited. Sure, sure the three richest men in America now make more than the bottom 50% of Americans all stacked together, but Zuckerberg probably does work 3.2 million times harder than a nurse. Think about how much more value he adds to society, right? Just how else could that nurse post her charming memes about minions, the only thing that keeps her thankless and underpaid job from sapping the very last of her will to live from her

overworked husk? These men have children to feed and they each plan to have at least 18 to 34 more children to feed in order to do grassroots eugenics. Do we begrudge their need to leave at least a billion dollars to each of their children? Are we knocking gold toilet seats out of the mouths of innocent babies now? These men are nobly out to prevent the imminent population collapse, single-penisedly. What do you mean normal people can't afford to have children anymore, Andy? They should have already had children, Andy. Let them have bread. Let them have bread.

That is the greatest defense of capitalism I've ever heard. Look, I mean, look, I have a question for you guys. Don't you think Europe is looking at this the wrong way? They're trying to woo tech billionaires because they want a piece of the Silicon Valley action. But shouldn't Europe be selling the assets it has? And one of their biggest assets Europe has is laziness. Not replying to emails a seven day weekend, cycling everywhere and eating bread, growing Chinese vegetables on the ledge of their studio flat. Now these are the things that have made Europe famous, you know.

I mean, these guys want to build an app in six days. Michelangelo took 22 years and didn't refund a lot of the money for works that he promised other people. Perhaps American capitalism, so aptly and beautifully described by Alice, needs a dose of healthy European communism. Right. Well, I mean, that's, I think that's a very good, I mean, I do think the world basically needs a, I'd say, a 75 year siesta. Everyone just had a snooze for 75 years. I think we come, we just, you know, basically we just have the accumulated fatigue of thousands of years of civilization. We've just never, we've just never, never really just, apart from the Dark Ages maybe, we never

really just sat back and had a snooze. That was quite a long snooze in many parts of the world. Look I mean as we discussed the hippopotamus of progress has chosen for various and whatever reasons to splosh belly first into the murky swamp of corporate conquest. Now in wiser simpler times if we wanted something to work out well for us we would simply gather around and sacrifice a plumped up farm animal, maybe a nice round number of auction, or in particularly urgent matters, a spare daughter. The bugle does not endorse any form of sacrifice, real or mythical. Now instead, we offer up preferential tax regimes to unhinge very, very, salient heirs and metaphorically lick their metaphorical feet after metaphorically removing

their metaphorical socks with our metaphorically quivering teeth. So it's just different ways of doing things, I guess. You might think it's not unreasonable to ask tech companies to take responsibility for the material that is distributed by their platforms or the users of their platforms. And of course, you would be right. But something being not unreasonable is no longer good enough for it to be actually done. So that's progress. And I will only respect Silicon Valley. I the only time I'll do it is when the Instagram

algorithm goes on strike. There's no humanity in it. It takes three days off. Because I don't want to feed a beast that is relentless. My best friend at the moment is going through a divorce and I feel quite honored and privileged that their emotional trauma has started appearing in relationship advice clips in my Instagram. I feel like period syncing is one thing, algorithm syncing is another. Are you dating an avoidant man? No, but I know who to forward this to. In other tech news, panic across the US markets sparked by a Chinese AI bot called DeepSeek, which has wiped off hundreds of billions of dollars worth of the value of various tech firms, in particular Nvidia, the computer chipsters who had a sweet 600

billion skonked off their market value, which is now yours for a bargain basement 2.9 trillion if you've got spare cash sloshing around. It's been described as a Sputnik moment which refers back to when America realized it and really needed to raise its game after the Soviet Union blasted Sputnik 1, the first human-made satellite into space in 1957, followed by Sputnik 2 which contained celebrity space dog Leica. Sputnik 1 of course was designed to look like a tennis ball so Leica would instinctively direct her rocket after it. So Deep Seekers... I mean that was obviously after the the first two rounds of space attempts, Spitnik and Spatnik. We didn't manage to break the atmosphere, just involved shooting dogs over palm trees with a cannon.

Deep Seekers absolutely rocked the markets by apparently doing a better, cheaper version of what US-based AI companies can do. Firms like OpenAI, ChatGPT, Apocalyptic, Auto Mayhem, H2O, that stands for Hurrying Human Obsolescence, and FXHG0, fingers crossed, here goes nothing. So Alice, you've kept an eagle eye on the development of AI and technology for us ever since you joined Join the Bugle. Can you explain exactly what is, you know, why this panic has spread so fast? Well, I mean, fundamentally, all of these tech companies have been going in hard on AI. They've been putting billions of dollars behind it. They've been doing rounds of fundraising basically on the premise that AI would eventually prove a use

case for itself that would earn back the billions of dollars that they were pouring into it and also that it would solve the energy crisis that it was creating by virtue of solving the problem more quickly than they could solve it. So they were pouring more and more and more money in, in the hope that it would come back out. And what has happened is they have achieved the goal of AI. These American tech companies have finally achieved what we call like a human level AI, which is to say that AI has become so human that it's had its job stolen by AI.

And that the AI out of China has come in, it's about four months behind in development of the current leading US models. It's tanked US tech stocks in a way that had I been a tech billionaire who had some information that this was going to happen, I would have definitely rushed to get my little handies on the levers of government power in order to establish some sort of nationalist protectionist regime, so I could fend off some of the shit sticks. Alice is absolutely right, Andy. You know, intelligence doesn't have to cost money. You know, I live in a country that sent a spacecraft to the moon for like 15 rupees.

So, you know, it's possible to do things at low cost. As a child, you know, outside my school, they used to sell two encyclopedias. One was called the Encyclopedia of the Whole World, and it cost 1000 rupees. And the other was called the Encyclopedia of the Whole World, and it cost 10 rupees, which is one. Now, that second book didn't have all the depth of the other encyclopedia, but it had all the subjects. So say you turned to the page that said Spain, right? You were studying Spain.

And it had one line. It said, Spain is a country that has oranges and a king. That's good enough. Deep Seek is like that. Only apparently if you type in Tiananmen Square, it starts playing the Los Lobos hit song La Bamba. So it does have a sense of people as well. Also driving the the market panic were rumors that at some point humanity might think to itself, is this all making us happier? I should add, we're far too sophisticated in advance as a species nowadays, to ask a stupid question like that.

You know, to really compare to really compare cheaper and more expensive sources of intelligence, I'd like to conduct a test at some point, I'd like to type in Andy's Oldspun Cricket into four different chat intelligence bots and see what comes up and then figure out which one is cost effective or not. I mean, if you give the same information, you know, for one Remdembi. Yeah. Well, I'm prepared to throw myself into that competition.

I'll take them on. Oh, I will absolutely take them on. My daily rate is very competitive. And of course, we will go into a world, Andy, where your own biography of yourself would be less relevant than the DeepSeek and JadG GPT biographies of you. America News Now, and well, let's have an update on the past week. As the old saying goes, a week is a long time in politics. And right now, if you're not a fan of Donald Trump, and without wishing to judge a book by the podcasts they listen to, I'm guessing that

you buglers are probably not fans of Donald Trump if you're not a fan of Trump and everything he stands for 207 more weeks really feels about as appealing as an eternity on hold to a government call center now Look, it's hard to know how to analyze this whether it's a Travesticious betrayal of American values or America finally revealing its true eternal self or some kind of mixture of the two. It's too early to say. But anyway, Donald Trump, as we recorded last week, as I said, was back at the Capitol, the proverbial dog returning to its vomit. The human political incarnation of sunny delight, unnaturally orange, highly processed, containing

nothing genuine and really not good for you short term or long term, but oddly addictive to some people. And he has unleashed an absolute deluge of executive orders and policies. I think they've revealed his taste in films in many ways. The Purge, he's basically legalized crime with his presidential pardons for people who tried to essentially destroy American democracy. The day after tomorrow environmental devastation god knows what the f*** Elon Musk has been watching but probably

some films that sparked numerous memes. He's announced detention camps which are I think fair to say historically tainted. Trump issued an order ending birthright citizenship for the US born children of immigrants which I'm pretty sure includes him, and also contravenes the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. But look, we Wokesters, we've been complaining about how addicted America is to, for example, the Second Amendment. So is this not just a welcome move away from blindly sticking with outdated amendment dogma? No, it's not. But let's pretend it is. He's renamed the Gulf of Mexico and Mount McKinley. Now it is quite odd, bearing in mind he's basically said that he doesn't believe in the concept of gender, saying there's now only two genders allowed in the USA. He

can't accept people changing their pronouns, but he wants to call a mountain in Alaska after a guy who never went to Alaska and came from Ohio where there are no f***ing mountains. But maybe that will be a gateway to him being more accepting of people changing their names and titles going back to the old Mount McKinley name rather than Denali. So, Alice, any particular highlights for you? I mean, there comes a time in every life where you have to, you suddenly realize that your parents can't stop you. And I feel like we need to thank Donald Trump for showing where most of American history has been regulated by, oh, no one would do that.

Turns out you can and you will. And it's either within the rules or it's against the rules and who's going to stop you? I think my favorite was the Bishop of Washington delivering a sermon in front of Donald Trump and asking him to show mercy towards the people in America who were afraid. And Trump just came back with sort of a real anger as though he were being personally attacked by the request to show mercy. When he was told that she was citing the teachings of Jesus, her boss, Trump posted, I hear bad things about failed carpenter and radical left loser Jesus. He owes me an apology for the hardline anti-Trump commandments.

Rabbis didn't like him. Romans didn't like him. Couldn't even decide between being his father, the son, or the Holy Ghost. Indecisive! I just feel like asking for mercy is such a milk toast thing to be offended by. Just, you know, someone asking for mercy with the people who are scared of you because you ran a campaign deliberately geared towards scaring them so that the people who enjoy seeing their enemies be scared and upset would vote for you. That's, that's like being a Hun

mid-pillage and some weeping teen flinging themselves at your feet and is like, mercy for my family, Lord, please don't cut my head off. And you're like, how dare you imply I'd cut your head off. So you cut his head off to serve him right. I mean it was an unusual sight of someone standing by their principles when talking to Donald Trump. That's something that we just, there was a kind of cognitive dissonance. We're so unused to it now. Mercy is one of the many terms that has been essentially ripped out of the dictionary. I think there were, one of Trump's executive orders was to remove the word mercy from all dictionaries in America.

But it is one of the harder aspects of Trumpic success to understand how the Christian right in America has thrown its support behind the least Christian person in the history of the USA. But I guess, you know, in some ways there's some similarities between Trump and Jesus Christ himself, also albeit in a different way, a rehabilitated convict, also only really achieved what he achieved in his career because of the legacy of who his father was and what was handed down. And also, I guess another thing that Trump has in common with Jesus Christ is that when people talk about him, the word cross crops up a lot. So there are some similarities, but even so, I still can't quite understand the Christian

rights love of Trump. It makes no sense to me. I mean, it truly is Jesus who was the original Nepo baby, you know, and like classic Nepo baby gets a second chance even when you die. Just remack. You know, it says something about the world where this reverend is giving the speech and she talks about kindness and mercy and she said, basically all she said was be kind, be merciful and have compassion. And Trump's response was,

what a nasty thing to say. And immediately once she finished a speech about compassion and empathy, she received 5,000 death threats. So that just shows you where the world is. It's a good place, I think. Yeah, there's a good biblical number of death threats as well. You know, if that was going to happen in the Bible, you know, feeding the 5,000, the 5,000 death threats, that is just what Christianity has metastasized into clearly in America. Interestingly, the... Poor lady, she's got to have more cheeks to turn than those clown robots at the circus with their mouths open.

In possibly related young people turning away from democracy news now, a survey has been reported in the Times here that 52% of people aged between 13 and 27, Gen Z, or Gen Z if you're pronouncing it wrong, said they thought the UK would be a better place if a strong leader was in charge who doesn't have to bother with Parliament and elections. We do need to remember the unspoken blanks, the words that essentially come afterwards in square brackets, which are, they prefer a strong leader rather than someone who doesn't have to go to the Parliament in elections brackets, compared with the current decayed state or democratic system and the media systems that feed it with intravenous, artificially concocted bile. We have to remember that when we put that in context. Alice, you are the closest of the three of us to to Gen Z.

Do you relate to these feelings? Look, Andy, I have in my darker moments thought I'm I had the thought that I'm not sure our current institutions will survive the internet. You know, our current ideas of law and justice and structural authority, I don't know that they can survive. You know how the aristocracy don't know that they can survive. You know how the aristocracy didn't really survive the printing press? People could suddenly read about what aristocrats were and be like, oh, better burn all that down. Suddenly realizing that they're not special just because they could afford a bath.

So I'm not sure how the democratic ideals of like the will of the people can survive the reality of the internet which shows you what people are actually like Well that brings us to the end of this week's This week's bugle. Thank you very much for listening. Thanks to everyone who's come to my tour shows There are a few tickets left for some of the shows details at andyzoltzman.co dot uk alice has for some of the shows details at andyzoltzman.co.uk Okay, alice has reminded us of the your your book tour My book tour is going to be in February in the UK in a bunch of different places including

Leicester Leeds Birmingham Manchester Brighton, Edinburgh. There's a bunch of dates. You can find them at thebeaglepodcast.com or at alicefraser.com. The book, of course, is still available. It's called A Passion for Passion. The tour is A Passion for Passion. Come along. I will sign almost anything if you bring it to me. And why did I say that? Also, expressions of interest are now open up on my Patreon for my writer's retreat in September. If you want to express your interest, go to patreon.com slash Alice Fraser.

Also, a new podcast is out under the Bugle umbrella. It is called Realms Unknown. It is a podcast about sci-fi and fantasy and genre fiction, books, gaming, television. It's, it's the podcast that I was always meant to do. It redeems my wasted youth reading sci-fi and fantasy novels up the back of the room. I am hosting it. It's a bugle podcast production. It's going to be a lot of fun available now.

I'm just picturing Alice on a book tour and people coming up with rental agreements to get signed. There is bond agreements. I'm back in the UK in March to be at something called the Chiswick Comedy Festival on the 14th and 15th of March which I believe is in Chiswick and given there is some evidence in the title and I will put up details on social media about times and so on. Great, well thank you for listening. We will be back next week, Buglers, with the latest instalments in the elongated novel of human history. Goodbye! Oh hello strangers, I'm Alice Fraser, your guide to the galaxies, goblins, dungeons and dystopias we'll be hurling ourselves into in a weekly hero's journey through realms unknown into the dark but sensual heart of all our favourite speculative fictions.

We'll navigate the wild realms created by brilliant authors, filmmakers, game designers and more. New episodes drop every week on your podcast app or on YouTube. Do not resist the call to adventure, Chosen One. Join me for Realms Unknown.