The Bugle - Razing Arizona

Episode Date: April 14, 2024

Arizona has done a good job of disgracing itself this week, and it's not even our top story! Is it Israel? Is it espionage? No, it's the sun, the naughty sun!A new Ask Andy is in your feed. Send thoughts and questions for Andy at [e-mail]. Click follow to make sure you get every episode and please drop us a nice review or rating wherever you choose.This episode was presented and written by:Andy ZaltzmanAlice FraserNish KumarAnd producer by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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eligible to be Bugle co-host this week Chris I think we might need to tighten our vetting process get it down to one or two billion simplify things but I'm delighted that those two are in inverse order of north to south latitude latitude or longitude I can never remember in the southern hemispheres famous Australia Longitude is the long one. Shall I just start again? In the Southern Hemisphere's famous Australia region, it's Alice Fraser, and way up north, or two miles up north from where I am in the shed, it's Nish Kumar. Hello, both of you. Hello, hello. I should mention that I'm not the one making old man grunting noises, it is my small child. That was your wrestling name wasn't it Nick, old man grunting noises.

Undefeated, still the champion. Yeah so Alice's latest child, the sequel, has peaked on a couple of recent bugles in action, once again. And I don't know what, because as we discussed he's passed some physical satire on the world in a previous bugle. What do you think he's got lined up today, Alice? I cannot wait to find out. I feel like that's... Whatever he does, I'll find charming and no one else will. I feel that is the rule. You can have one thing, Andy. You can have one of two things.

One, you can have me on maternity leave, or two, you can have no baby, but you can't have them both at the same time. What have I always said about football players and buglers? If you're good enough, you're old enough. Alice's baby is good enough to bugle. Get him on the bugle. There's a baby on the bugle. He talks our demographic listenership by at least 10 years, I reckon. This is how we get the next generation on. I've been saying you need to get more Gen Z co-hosts.

Arguably you've overshot by a good sort of 18 years and you've got slightly too young. I think you've got background to whatever generation A is again. But let me tell you, this is how we breed the next generation. This kid is gonna be doing pun runs and overusing the word c*** before we know what's what.

Well, luckily that was bleeped out so he couldn't understand it. So let's say... Yeah, Chris is really working the live bleep this week. Normally he edits them in but because of the presence of a baby, Chris's bleeping finger is working overtime. The c*** finger's gonna fall off. That's section two. I mean occasionally just any word beginning with a hard C or an F just gets bleeped out because he's got to act fast.

But I hope no one talks about countries. I've got a funky cough. How have you been? I've been pretty good. I've not reproduced. Which puts me one down on this podcast. Now that this podcast is exclusively of child producers. I don't know where I've been to be honest with you. I feel like I've had the last few weeks. I've achieved very little Yeah, I've been given my opinions on things. Yeah Nish I would like to take issue with your suggestion that anyone in this room room, but me has actually produced a child Come on come on it's a team game Alice, come on. Come on.

Come on, it's a team game. The striker doesn't get... Cheering from the bench at best. Tag me in coach, physically impossible. One person has produced a child and the other two were harrowed witnesses. Actually, Andy did catch one of them. Oh I did catch one of them. In absolute fairness Andy did catch one of them. Yeah I did. Super catch. Soft hands. If someone in the audience catches one you get to keep

it right? I think so. I can't remember if I've mentioned this on the bugle before, in an Edinburgh show I did when my first child was a few months old, I had an award ceremony, in fact just before the bugle began, I had an award ceremony in the second half in which I awarded myself an award for something, I can't remember what it was, but it was like giving out awards for, I can't remember, stupidest people in the world or whatever. And anyway, so I thought that my wife brought the baby in towards the end of the last show of the run and I thought it'd be funny to get the baby on stage like Alex Higgins when he won the World Snooker Championship in the 1980s. I thought it'd be quite a funny moment, quite a touching moment of father-baby bonding. The baby however disagreed in extremely vocal terms with this and just started bawling. So what I thought would be quite a touching moment

became child cruelty. Is this the same one of your children that said you were too silly to be a patriot? Yes, yeah, but that was a solid six or seven years later. Every single element of that detail is pure Zoltanism. Bringing a baby on stage, already a mistake, but also the fact that the baby was brought on stage in reference to Alex Higgins winning the World Snooker title. Everything about that. Everything that cocktail of parental negligence and obscure sporting referencing is pure Zoltzman. Well, you know, that's what you've got to do as a parent. You've got to introduce them to who you are as a person early in their life.

Um, anyway, shall we crack on with the show? We are recording on the 12th of April 2024. Tomorrow the 13th of April it will be happy 281st birthday to one of America's founding daddies. Is that too informal? Dads? Fathers? Co-parents? Let's go with that. Thomas T.J. Jazzy Jefferson would have been 281 if he hadn't sadly, spoiler alert, died. He was the third president of the USA and his place in the top 10 best ever presidents lists Looks pretty secure for now. There don't seem to be too many challenges Knock him down the rankings

Although it was a bit easy to be a good president in the pre-mass media days When it took someone several weeks and at least one horse to tell you that you were the worst in the history Well bleeped again Chris. And 14th, Sunday the 14th of April, well 14th of April was a bad day for Abraham Lincoln, one of Jefferson's successors in 1865. Picked up a bit of a theatre going injury. Historians have recently uncovered Linkey's review of that play, Our American Cousin, at Ford's Theatre in Washington DC written on his deathbed and the review was this, I'm all in favor of experimental theatre breaking the fourth wall and challenging the audience making them contemplate the way things are and

the way things could be by stretching the boundaries of art but frankly that went at least one step too far. Special effects were good though, arguably too realistic. Two stars. As always a section of The Bugler's going straight in the bin. This week, this week a special Pompeii section. Some exciting new discoveries have been made at the ancient volcano-preserved Roman sites of Pompeii near Naples, they found, well as always, some naughty frescoes. The Romans, of course, not afraid of porno-graffitiing the shit out of a wall. But not everything they left behind when Vesuvius got its Vulcanoodles boiling up good and poppy was quite so racy.

In fact, only an estimated 88% of all Roman relics are, in fact fact pure unadulterated filth. So amongst the 12% there's a fresco of the multi-franchised celebrity god Apollo trying to seduce the Trojan priestess Cassandra. This was a genuine find and it's quite a simple piece. Cassandra of course famously cursed to tell the truth but for no one to believe her and looking at this picture of Apollo naked but for a cloak draped over one shoulder, the truth she might be telling him that he is choosing not to believe is that yes, it does look really very small. Amongst the latest discoveries also are a scroll containing secret plans for a lunar catapult that the Emperor Nero had developed

a couple decades previously. A time machine apparently built in the year 2291 and then repaired in 2143. Plus traces of American eternal life obsessive Brian Johnson's underpants read into that what you will they found a slice of very burnt toast which if you look at it from a certain angle has the face of Nigel Farage on it and also the body of a politician from Pompeii preserved for all eternity by the eruption in the middle of a speech in which he is not only denying that there is anything to worry about

but also claiming there is no such thing as a volcano some things never change. Also there was a report about the Middle East situation, which was pretty shit back then, to be fair. Some things, well, many things, never change. And also, what looks like a very hastily painted picture of a man pointing at an interrupting volcano and mouthing what looks like a very rude Roman swear phrase that roughly translates, if my memory serves, as, holy f***ing f*** Strigils who pulled Vulcan's finger. So, some amazing finds being made and to mark this incredible, these incredible finds

and it's amazing to think actually that, you know, without Vesuvius we wouldn't have discovered ancient Rome at all. But in fact the, Vesuvius hasn't had a major eruption since 1944, which I think is something to do with EU health and safety regulations, or Vesuvius being so worried about the social media backlash if it erupts again that it just doesn't think it's worth the hassle. But anyway, to mark this discovery, we are giving you buglers your own audio Vesuvius eruption. In 52 weekly installments over the next year, you can recreate the famous 79 AD Eruption to mark the 1945th anniversary of the superstar Kano blowing its cranky top. These 52 installments will lead up to the Eruption and its aftermath. And here is part one of your Vesuvius audio story.

Oh there you go, it does get a bit more exciting as things get. I've said it before and I'll say it again. The guy in Pompeii who has forever been immortalized with his hands on his dick, look it up, most relatable figure in human history. Absolutely the most relatable figure in human history. I know that there are some quote unquote scientists who've said it's possible that his hands were not on his dick and it's just,

it's just fallen that way and it's just, it's a trick of the burial but what is more likely that that has happened or someone has looked out the window seeing the end coming thought one more for the road lads history history's most relatable figure the man who masturbated at the site of the soviet erupting you know, also Cassandra was probably impressed by Apollo's small penis. Didn't they like her sort of dapper, gentlemanly little penis back in the day? Well, it does seem from the sculptures they were very trendy. Missed my era.

And many of the frescoes. Mine's gentlemanly, always wears a top hat. Missed my era. I think mine had its top hat chopped off pretty early. Family show, family show. Right! Family show myself! Chris was complaining about how long it took us to get to the top storage on the live tour but I think in terms of non-live shows we're pretty much hitting the 15-minute mark here Chris. Are you proud? Well I don't know I think I mean I think the intros to The Bugle have got longer over the years and I think it's probably like a subconscious desire to avoid having to talk about actual news. Yeah this isn't ill-disciplined Chris it's satire okay?

It's structural satire. And it's self-preservation. It's emotional self-preservation. Yeah, and I will also notice that as we get into the news section, Alice has symbolically taken the baby away from the recording station. And that makes total sense. Get the baby away from the news. He did a massive poo, so... Respect, respect. The World Has Been Plunged Into Darkness Top story this week! The world has been plunged into darkness.

All light extinguished, bar some slight flickers, as if to reproach us all for the wrongs that have led to this. Surely a divine punishment for what humanity has wrought upon itself and its planet... oh, it's's fine again just a few minutes later yes it was eclipse week a great week for fans of celestial metaphors but was this week's eclipse a warning sign from a higher being that now is the time to repent and repair our planet or next time we will

be truly doomed to an eternal chasm of inescapable nothingness. Well to analyze and interpret the seemingly inexplicable phenomenon that was the Eclipse, isn't it lucky that I have two of the absolute best celestial harbinger interpreters on the portent and augury divination circuit today, Alice and Nish. I mean obviously science can't explain shit like this, so what would you, how would you to interpret what we saw over North America this week well Andy it's an extraordinary thing when when the universe lines up a cosmic trick shot of That's the language I can understand. Oh my god.

Oh my god. Alice even you are making snooker references now. Too Brutay. God Alice even you were making snooker references So this is the problem, you know, there was an eclipse I was told that I didn't know there was an eclipse coming I've been trying to get off my phone So I didn't know I didn't know that it was arriving and I had already sacrificed like six maidens before I thought to Google it Realized it was meant to be happening and it was going to go away. Though luckily for the maidens, it was over quicker than you'd expect, so they were only about 60% sacrificed, which was embarrassing to walk back.

Actually I am in Australia, so I'm not in the path of the eclipse. I was told once never to look at an eclipse, so I've been avoiding all photographic evidence of the eclipse. I've just been asking my friends what it looked like. Nish, how would you interpret the eclipse? Oh, I see what's happened here. Yep. Darkness covering light. This is an act of cosmic woke-ism, Andrew. This is political correctness, God insane. The white sun being obscured by the darker moon. Oh, I see. Hitting quotas, are we?

Space? Unbelievable. And then to add a layer on top of that, we've got to look at it through special glasses. Oh, no. This happened in North America. The continent of freedom. A part of those freedoms is the freedom to look directly at the sun until your retinas burn to uselessness. Every act of this is evidence of a culture of wokeism,

the woke mind virus that has run absolutely amuck. It's infected space, it's infected glasses. Where will it stop, Andrew? Right. I don't know, but I mean, if America is burning its retinas, I think that would complete the full set of critical faculties that it's lost in recent years. How dare you! Well, Amazon has to recall a bunch of eclipse glasses for being completely non-functional, and Googling of, oh, my eyes hurt, has gone up by about 50% in some affected areas. How long supposed to see sun? In terms of how it compared with other eclipses, for me it was a bit disappointing. It didn't really do anything new or unexpected.

It was the same old, same old really, very derivative of other eclipses. I mean sure that's maybe what the eclipse fans want, but I prefer to see something that pushes the envelope a little bit further through the letter boxes. My main beef with it was I didn't really see the point of it because it was so short. Sure, it got dark, but there was hardly time to have a cheeky nightcap, put my pajamas on, hop into bed, do a crossword, read a page or two of the Very Hungry Caterpillar, and then settle down for a nice long snooze in my normal nocturnal ritual. Or, you know, that might be not your thing, maybe you didn't even have time to raise your local nightclub and get your groove on all night long-ish. But it was four minutes of piss-poor-pseudo

night for me, not impressed, one star. But if you missed the solar eclipse buglers due to being in the wrong place in the world, as the three of us were, don't worry, there is a regular, daily, earthular eclipse in most parts of the world when one side of the Earth blocks the light out from the Sun from the other side of the Earth. So enjoy that if you missed out on the rarest solar eclipse. I'm not surprised you weren't a fan of the eclipse, Andy, because for you that's pretty conservative play. Just playing for snookers, life-steering the view of the sun. And you would have preferred a more audacious three-planet plum, if the moon had tried to knock the sun into Venus.

Now I'm making snooker jokes! This podcast has too many American listeners for us to be doing this! podcast has too many American listeners for us to be doing this. The next total eclipse was scheduled to take place on the 12th of August 2026 across parts of Europe. A combined bid by Iceland, Spain and Portugal secured the rights to a two-minute long eclipse. But we are just hearing that the rights to that 2026 eclipse have just been bought up by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund. The trajectory of the eclipse will now travel instead over the Arabian Peninsula, circling around Riyadh four times before disappearing off into the Indian Ocean. Apparently it was just eye-watering the amount of money they threw at it. Too good for the cash-strapped moon to turn down and the sun, sure, the sun's raking it in from the solar power boom already.

It doesn't need the money. But as we all know there are generally only two things that the already hyper wealthy want in life, more and more. So I'm afraid, uh, trips fans in the Iberian Peninsula are going to have to go to Saudi Arabia. I don't like the plush. I have really had the wrong idea about eclipses, Andy, because of the amount of like extremely trashy adventure books I read as a kid I was pretty sure they happened basically anytime you were being menaced with being eaten by a slightly problematically described tribe basically make it make an eclipse happen and their primitive fear would release you into the narrative.

The spicy smelling dwellers of the Shadowlands. Bold title for your first Edinburgh show. Listen the reviews reflected it. I don't like a partial eclipse because it suggests a failure of conviction on Bonnie Tyler's behalf. Every time I hear it, it feels like it's partial eclipse of the heart, like she's just given up. Turn around if you want.

Yeah. I mean, also total eclipse of the heart is really just something that passes in a few minutes, isn't it? And then you get back to normal. It's not all just cracked up to be. In what an exciting development in terms of the TV coverage of the eclipse a Mexican news outlet was sharing footage that had been submitted by viewers and accidentally showed what can only and accurately be described as a man's ball sack after a prankster sent in footage featuring his his nuggers I mean personally I don't

have a problem with this because I think as a planet as a species we've gone too far away from our ancient traditions of adding fertility symbols to absolutely everything that was published in the media. I mean sure media has changed from Dormings Inside Caves, primitive statuary, weird shit in temples and great big plonkers on hillsides. But still what is wrong with adding what is of course one of the all-time symbolic icons of human species regeneration, the testicle, to a new story about the all-enveloping darkness coming over the world I've got no no problem with this at all I mean Nish I can't remember if in your various TV shows what I can't remember anything were ever cancelled due to

Testicles on screen or if it was always something else, but no we can't blame the balls for that and Let's not blame the balls for that, Andy. Let's not blame the balls for Quibi. Let's blame the idea of what if YouTube wasn't free, but was worse. The full context for this, a story I imagine has simply inundated the bugles inbox. Chris won't give any of us access to it, because he knows what would happen.

We'd send out all sorts, we'd start replying to a lot of the fan emails with abusive messages. But I imagine this is, Chris has received little else this week. RCG Media's 24 hour news show was doing a story about the eclipse when the anchors showed clips that had been sent in by fans experiencing the celestial phenomenon only to fall victim to apparently what is and again i'm

getting this from news.com.au an australian news website so i can only go by the information i'm being given here and as we all know if there's one thing Australia could be trusted to do it's produce people that tell the truth in the news media. Apparently this is a well-known prank in Latin America of just popping your balls out and so they showed clips of people enjoying the eclipse and then one of the clips had a man dipping his testicles into the frame, blocking out the sun. The ball bag eclipse. And very, very few news outlets were able to resist the phrase, the news outlet aired the man's testicles very much. I feel like this is just as us. This

is what happens when you have a media that spends 10 years asking people to join the conversation. You deserve to get teabagged from some prankster. I'm also struggling to understand the vetting process for these videos. Presumably, they were not live FaceTiming people. There's no vetting process. What vets mostly do is cut balls off. So they just received a load of videos and thought, whack that on the air. No need, no one's going to have dropped a couple of balls into these shots. Let's just put them straight on the air. It is, in a way, what this person has done with their ball bag is

really give us a salutary lesson in the importance of vetting your content. Chris would, Chris would not simply allow audio clips from the listeners to go on the air. Why would he not allow that? Because he knows our listeners and he knows that those clips would be obscene beyond belief. And could take huge amounts of libel about historical figures. Can you libel the dead? I'm not sure you can, can you? You can libel the dead. I'm not sure you can. I don't know, legally. That is absolutely fantastic.

Pit the Elder used to take dumps in the bath. Wait, while he was in the bath or from the outside of the bath? From the outside! That was his thing. Sue me, PTE! You got nothing! I might explain why Pit the Younger was such an angry man. His dad was a bath dumper.

Right, how do we get on to William Pit shitting in the bath? Let's get this f***ing show back on track! Right, so we saw literal darkness make its pitch this week, but how has metaphorical darkness responded? Well, pretty impressively actually. The doomsday clock is well known, we've talked about it on the Google before, it generally hovers around one or two minutes to full blown midnight, aka Armageddon, but I prefer, as a cricket fan, to consult the doomsday light meter. So exactly what level of doom-laden gloom is hovering over the planet right now threatening the

prospect of any further play after tea? Well looking at it now, well I think they're definitely gonna have to come off it's, well I mean it looks pretty metaphorically dark on the telly and it's always actually quite a bit metaphorically darker than it looks in in in reality of course it's certainly not safe to face the metaphorical fast bowling of the Middle East or Ukraine wars and it's not really even fair to try and expect people to take on the wily spin of the environmental crisis so frankly with was that too crickety I mean we had a few complaints Chris on the live tour

that there was not enough cricket in the show. This is what happens when you don't include North America on the live dates. People said we were hoping for a few more cricket references, not enough. On every single show you screamed at people who didn't like cricket. Oh no, I did do that, yeah. But I don't think that made the edit though, did it? No, fair. It made the edit in the room, think oh yeah Chris is live bleeping he's not live editing yeah I feel like podcasting has given me real damage in life because now if I

say something I don't mean or if I'm in an awkward situation I say don't worry it won't make the edit try it next time you're making love Try it next time you're making love. Cut that bit. Don't f*** anything I say, Chris. I will not be censored by you. So let's look at the Middle East situation. yeah, I mean it's not fixed itself, disappointingly, and Iran attacking Israel was just what the doctor ordered, but unfortunately the doctor is unqualified and a covert psychopath. It's Dr Kevorkian, it's what Dr Kevorkian ordered. It's not what an actual doctor would order if the Middle East and indeed all humanity

was that doctor's patient. In terms of steps to achieve some sort of potentially durable peace, the idea of Iran attacking Israel, that is about as hope-inducing as turning up at your local swimming pool and seeing Godzilla checking in for his first day as a lifeguard. It's just, it's not, it's hard to be, it's hard to be optimistic at the best of times. There has been some talk of a ceasefire, with America putting increasing pressure on Israel as the scale of human devastation and suffering continues to increase. But as often in the Middle East, it's not really a case of two steps forward, one step

back. It's not even one step forward, two steps back. It's more a slight potentially forward twitch of the left big toe than repeat Bob Beeman's backwards to a very obvious cliff edge. So Nish, the prospect of Iran getting fully involved in this conflict Not great I'd say as a you know as a as a as a broad fan of global peace Yeah, as a broad fan of global, I'd describe myself as being not even just a broad fan I'd describe myself as being not even just a broad fan. I'd describe myself as being a specific

I'm a very specific fan of people not shooting at each other. I think credit to Everybody involved you've managed to find the one way of making things worse. We were all scratching our heads How can you possibly make this situation worse? How is it possible? And then there was an airstrike conducted on the Iranian consulate in Syria. Israel is being widely blamed, though it has not officially claimed responsibility for the attack. But everybody involved has managed to find a way to make things worse. President Joe Biden has promised Israel ironclad support. And given that Israel is run by Benjamin Netanyahu,

who to be absolutely fair to him, is a mad c***. Let's be fair to him. He's a mad c***. Given that he is in charge of Israel, a lot of us would prefer that President Joe E.B. clad his support in a less durable material than iron Possible he could offer them a wool clad support possible that he could offer them a an invisible cloak of support It's the the the steps that we're taking here are all as you say Andrew in completely the wrong direction Biden has said that it has reiterated his urge to Netanyahu to call for a ceasefire and has said

I think what he's doing is a mistake, I don't agree with his approach. Now I would say as the president of America there is one pretty significant thing you could do to help Israel not go down the wrong path and that is stop buying them weapons. If you were out on a night out with your friend and they had thrown up all over themselves all over the bar and started three fights What you would not do is say I think what you're doing is a mistake I don't agree with your approach and then buy them another beer. That is not what you do under the circumstances Right what goes on tour stays on tour next week. Listen, that may or may not have been drawn from Andy and my night out in Glasgow

after a tour show. I cannot get into the specifics of it. Look, as we all know, international politics is a team sport in which every country is either a goody or a baddy and obviously when it comes to us versus them, their being dead is less dead-like than our kind of being dead. So my advice if you don't want to be upset by international policy decisions is to decide that the people from your country and your country alone are the real people and the rest are just sort of hypothetical people in a point-scoring exercise in your high school's debate club that makes. Well I think that's explained basically the entirety of human history in one simple paragraph, Alice. Well done.

America trying to go back in time news now and Arizona has revived a law from 1864 that bans abortion and this decision has been criticized by Republicans who passed this law themselves. So when Republicans have reached the point where they are appalling themselves, you know that America has to take a long, hard bath with itself, ideally not in a bath from the Pitt family. So I mean, I think it's a bit of a risky road for anyone to go down using laws from 1864, particularly the USA, bearing in mind what was going on in the USA still in 1864.

Matt Gress, a Republican state representative, said, I categorically reject rolling back the clock to a time when slavery was still legal and we could lock up women and doctors because of an abortion. Even Carrie Lake, a Republican running to represent Arizona in the Senate, and a staunch Trump loyalist called on the state legislature to come up with an immediate common sense solution that Arizonans can support. Now, when America has reduced Trump supporters

to what is beyond their last resort a call for common sense. You know quite how extreme this bit of legislation is. I mean this is the problem with a lot of Republican politicianing is that they don't want the thing that they say they want. What they want is to be prevented from doing the thing that they say they want so that they can raise funds against the people who prevented them from doing the thing they said they want. If they get what they want they're the dog that caught the car. I mean, you look at this law, if you've had a look at the law, if you're the kind of person

who looks at laws like a massive nerd like me, I can sum it up for you. It's an old-fashioned law. It's a good old-fashioned classic law back from the time where men were men and fetuses were people and women weren't people, men definitely were and let's be clear extremely men and if any of the modern men who long for the time in which men were men were sent back to be men in that time they would immediately die, they would get syphilis and they would be murdered for being offensively affected by a washerwoman with a rolling pin. in. So the thing that upsets me most about all of this is that when the law was originally passed, Arizona was not even a state. So if we're really going back to 1864 and we're really going

into states rights, then Arizona must no longer exist. Is there anything that sums up the complicated and almost incomprehensible state of American state legislature that Arizona can now restart a law from a time where it did not exist? And I'll tell you what, if we're going back to real American originalism, they better start watching their back because the indigenous Americans might have something to say. For the good of America, we might have to restart scalping as a day-to-day practice. Go back even further.

Let's see what a pterodactyl thinks about abortion. Come on. Of course, this sort of touches on Roe versus Wade which to many people is just a simple decision about the best way to cross a shallow river that's with or without a fox or chicken and some grain but in America of course it's become one of the defining issues of political identity and this age-old belief Alice that you mentioned that a woman's womb is an old entitled reactionary legislators business.

And what puzzles me is that you would assume that anti-abortion groups would be the most enthusiastic and committed supporters and funders of freely and easily available contraception. However, that assumption would be the assumption of someone who expects the world to behave with some vague sense of basic f**king logic. And many anti-abortion groups are also vague sense of basic f***ing logic and many anti-abortion groups are also anti-contraception which is like a road safety campaign group calling for the compulsory greasing of all brake pads on vehicles and for all roads to have 50 meter deep ditches full of poisonous snakes and sharpened rocks with no barriers to stop cars plummeting into them. It makes no f***ing sense America!

No sense! them. It makes no f**king sense America, no sense. In other American news, Ted Cruz has got a f**king podcast. I've got a simple message, Ted Cruz. Get the f**k out of my art form! With all due respect, which of course, when it comes to Ted Cruz, is no respect whatsoever. This is a curious story in which Ted Cruz was supposedly doing a podcast for no money at all but it turns out that a super PAC affiliated to Cruz has been receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in digital revenue from it, fuelling ethical concerns. Now, do ethical concerns still exist in America? Or is this a media assumption that there are ethical concerns? Is it in a parallel universe

in which America has taken a very different path than the one it has, there would be ethical concerns? This fuels my ethical concerns, Andy. Why the f*** have I never been paid $215,000 for podcasting? I'm a better podcaster than Ted Cruz. I've never heard Ted Cruz podcasting, but I assume that he's never made a joke about the ability of the penis tip to scrape out competitor sperm from vaginas.

If you've forgotten, it was with frenulums like these, who needs enemas? I haven't forgotten. I remember it every time I'm sad. It makes me happy truly that is your Sistine Chapel if the tips of both of the fingers were the tips of the penis that would be it is I would also join Andrew in expressing my surprise that Ted Cruz has a podcast. I really, the word podcast is not one I associate with Ted Cruz. The main words I associate with Ted Cruz are, my god, I completely forgot about Ted Cruz.

What a ****. He, yeah, so iHeartMedia has been paying into a super pack aligned with Ted Cruz. In fairness to Ted Cruz, he is an asshole. And I don't know why, I think the only surprise here is that his corruption is taking the form of a podcast. I think we just assumed he was straightforward, skimming off the top in a brown envelope the old What happened to political corruption? Yeah, it's good. How are all my take the corruption good honest corruption What happened to just bags of cash? Brown-paper bags filled with money. Why is it now being digitally transferred to a super back where's the romance vinyls making a comeback what about the brown

bag corruption analog corruption back in here well maybe that could be the next thing we do on the bugles we you know both of you did the the bugle exclusive subscriber vinyl maybe we could do a bugle exclusive subscriber cash in a brown paper bag that's that's how we want voluntary subscriptions to be delivered now actually sorry I retract that I retract that immediately because again I'm well aware based on the history of the defamation of my Wikipedia page that if you threaten or offer some sort of avenue for these people, no offence, to get involved and do something terrible and stupid, they

will do it. So I would like to officially retract. How's the vinyl coming along Chris? Have we got them yet? I actually got an email from them this week saying that they have approved the artwork and I will have a quote test pressing imminently. So I will get a very very special limited edition version any moment now and I am on Orange Vinyl and I will report back soon. So if you did sign up for it, it's coming. You should be receiving it soon. That's very exciting. Well listen Ted Cruz is not the only ex-politician that has a podcast. I think it's worth just briefly drawing

attention to non-UK listeners to the fact that George Osborne has a podcast. George Osborne is the ex finance minister, the former chancellor of the Exchequer, who in the David Cameron administration was responsible for the decisions that made that nothing in Britain works anymore. The sort of program of austerity that hacked the entire British state to bits. It's the reason that the sentence, I took the train to see my doctor is now a work of science fiction in the United Kingdom. But he has a podcast where he gets to talk about how screwed up Britain is. He does it with an ex-politician who's more famous for dressing up as Jim Carrey in the mask and dancing to the song Cuban Pete on Strictly Come Dancing. So Osborne

and Cuban Pete have a podcast and for a long time I was really outraged by it and now I think of it as a genius piece of marketing because what's popular in podcasting? True crime. What do none of these true crime podcasts ever do get the murderer on? It's It's really incredible, you know, there's no Jack the Ripper podcast where Jack the Ripper says well You know, I did do a lot of murdering and I'll tell you what I didn't have time to do while I was murdering meal prep That's why this episode is brought to you by hello fresh It does seem that basically going into top-level politics is now just a means of getting a podcast.

Well, are we now reversing that procedure? Is it Zoltzman for PM? Absolutely, I'm ready for it. One final story before we go now and national stereotypes are living up to themselves news now. It's turned out that, according to a documentary, honey trap attempts do not work on French spies because everyone in France is so busy having affairs anyway that the honey trap has no impact. French spies' spouses are used to them having affairs, so there's no point Russia trying to trick French politicians or anyone in France, spies, whatever, into having affairs because

they'll be having them anyway. Now national stereotypes were always the entertaining, jovially acceptable side of prejudice. And, you know, it's part of prejudice that we've all been able to enjoy whilst not thinking too deeply about. And every now and again a new story comes along that really taps into our innate, elemental human desire to lump people who are from different places from us together into oversimplified categories to make us feel better about ourselves. It's just who we are as a species, and the sooner we stop fighting that, the better. Sorry, worse. Better or worse? What do those words mean anyway?

Anyway, honey traps have found their victims even more readily in this age of social media, with dating apps and people being able to send pictures of their crunkle chunks and dangle-blangles, without even having to commission a painter or sculptor, like in the old days. That's how Michelangelo, of course course got his interior decoration business off the ground back in the day. In Britain a Tory MP had to resign the party whip after being online honey trapped and sharing contact details of his colleagues. I do assume that is item one, two or three on things not to do if you're an MP on day one in Parliament along with don't tweet the nuclear codes and never say what you actually mean. But France is impermeable to the honey trap and I think we should raise a glass of what the French would call red wine to France

and appreciate how sometimes the national stereotype can do the world a favor. I love it so much. It's got Russian spies, it's got French people being louche, it's got someone going, I'll reveal your secret and some Frenchman going, I already told my wife about my mistress every second Thursday they catch up and bitch about my weird penis. My mistress buys my wife birthday presents, in fact they are both both having an affair with each other and also my best friend if you do not have a mistress as a Frenchman Gerard Depardieu comes with a mouthful of cocovines spits it directly into your mouth and then he has an affair with

your wife you cannot threaten me so this all comes from a documentary that is being made about spying and the real quote is like alarmingly close to what you have just done as an act of satire. A TGSE agent identified only as Nicholas it said in the documentary that the honey traps don't work because the agent generally said go ahead show her she'll understand or she already knows about it. We are in a wafer thin line between satire and reality with this story. It's like finding out British spies are not in danger of poisoning because none of their food is seasoned enough. Well that brings us to the end of this week's Bugle. Thank you very much for listening. Don't forget there are a couple of London live shows in June, the 7th and

8th of June at Leicester Square Theatre. Nish will be doing one, Alice you're doing the screen for those I think. And Nato Green will be doing one, Alice you're doing the screen for those I think and Nato Green will be physically in London for one of those shows as well so do buy all of the remaining tickets for those shows if you want to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme to help keep this show free, flourishing and independent go to the buglepodcast.com and click the donate button to make a one-off or a current contribution. Subscribers also get access to thebugalpodcast.com and click the donate button to make a one or a current contribution. Subscribers also get access to the monthly world exclusive Ask Andy show when I obtusely answer some of the questions you send

in. Alice, anything to plug? I have a book that's called it's on Unbound if you write my name into Unbound it's called the Dancy Lagarde Reader. I also, you can find me on Patreon, patreon.com slash Alice Fraser, where we do weekly writers meetings and salons where you come in and have a chat and that you get that for a dollar a month at the moment or more. I mean, you can pay more. I would prefer it if you paid more. Also got a podcast called The Gargle, which is the sonic glossy magazine to this Bugles audio newspaper. So if you want all of the news, but somewhat less of the depressing politics, it's all

there at The Gargle. Nish. I've got a huge amount to plug. And as you can tell by the fact that I'm prevaricating over this, it's because I'm frantically Googling myself for the details. The one thing, the thing that I do know is my last show, Your Power, Your Control, which I filmed, is now available globally on all platforms. So you can buy it on iTunes and Amazon and whatever, whichever platform it is you interact

with video. There's a bit of YouTube apparently you can pay for, that was all news to me. It's been completely released by the people of comedy dynamics and also it is available as an album on Spotify and Apple music and tidal which I'm hoping means that I get to meet Jay-Z, but I don't think it does Yeah, but yeah, so you can access or that show on all platforms and on Monday the 22nd of April I'll be doing a stand-up show in Berlin So if there are any Berlin based buglers, any Ich Bin Ein buglers, I'm doing a gig at the Quarch Comedy Club in Berlin on Monday the 22nd of April,

and tickets are available on Ticketmaster.de. I also have a stand-up tour beginning in November, dates almost confirmed, and I will possibly at some point update my website with some actual dates rather than some dates from gigs years ago Anyway, so keep stay tuned stay tuned buglers. Anyway, but yeah, it's quite a long tour This seems to stretch endlessly into next year So details forthcoming at some point quite soon. Until next week, Buglers, goodbye.