The Bugle - Shafts Of Hope: Pikachu Rampage

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

Everyone has an opinion on the Middle East, but this week The Bugle also has an opinion on mannequins, robots and Pokemon.Andy is with Ria Lina and Tiff StevensonPLUS: 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 ZaltzmanTiff StevensonRia LinaAnd produced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 4,278 of the Bugle, which is not only the last best hope of Earth, but also the podcast voted most likely to misuse Abraham Lincoln quotations in the first minute of a show. I'm Andy Zoltzman, and this is a podcast very much performed, produced, and listened to predominantly by human beings, meaning it is a show of the people, by the people, for the people. Come on, we want to click on to that title.

Let's meet our co-hosts now, I've always believed that in times like the present men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity. Therefore we've put two women as our co-hosts this week. Three out of three! Take that link and your great big stringy ol' hat wearing hips to be in it. Memorial dwelling quotation, chundering, trip to the theatre, ruining loom. you've been school Anyway, we have to try to find some lights in the world's darkness this week We have realina and Tiffany Stevenson. Welcome back to the bugle both of you. How are you? Good. I mean to be fair to Lincoln. I don't think the play was that great before I got started

I loved that that we could rewrite that as now being like this is how you ruin a play Get assassinated. Or so rude. Or did it make it better? Did everyone go, oh finally, some drama. Oh, they've really broken the fourth wall with this one. I mean, go out into the audience. I mean, don't include this in the final record if it's too soon by anyone.

That makes me laugh because I did a show. Was it last night or maybe at the weekend and I said we were heading into an apocalypse and I said you always know when you're heading into a apocalypse because comedy is booming I bet it was a right laugh the night before Pompeii. And a woman in the audience went oh no and I was like too soon, too soon to do the pump-hatchers. LAUGHTER MUSIC We are recording on the 23rd of October 2023. On the 22nd of October, 4,04bc. Well, that was the date the world was created,

according to the Bible. And also, according to James Usher, the thinking chronologists mid-17th century primate of all Ireland, who put all the evidence together available at the time to conclude that the world was launched around 6 p.m. on the 22nd of October, 2004 BC. I mean, if you're going to launch up a new planet, would you do it? Would you do it six PM? If you not want to, like, you know, get the morning, morning, new cycle, six PM seems a weird time to. And 22 10, it doesn't have a really, really have a ring to it.

Does it? 22 10. I don't know. Maybe they were aiming for like an early bird special or something. It's possible. I mean, get in at six. That's that's that's most of Monday gone, isn't it? Because it was a Monday, wasn't it? It was. Yes, it would have been a Monday, wouldn't it?

It would have been a Monday. That's most of it. Like, although to be fair, maybe God was, was, you know, how, you know, he probably was procrastinating, you know, what I mean, you get up on a Monday and you're like, oh, I really need to create earth today. Oh, I'm just going to make a cup of tea first. I'm just going to, you know, go through my mail. Oh, I'm just going to make a cup of tea first. I'm just going to, you know, go through my mail. Yes. Maybe Bob Geldoff had had a word in his ear. So I don't like Monday. So just move it. Like if we can have half of it, half a day. Or maybe that was the smallest job. And he's like, I don't need a full day for this job. So he just went boom. By seven, he was done. He was having tea.

Yeah, that's possible. I done, he was having tea. Yeah, it's possible. I mean, just 6pm this time is, just the sun was starting to go down. Or as we now know, just as the sun was staying exactly where it was in the brand new earth, chose whatever reason to rotate in the west to east direction. If it had gone the other way, we'd have had evening in the mornings and mornings and the evenings. And I think breakfast would have been our evening meal upon such threads. Is nothing wrong with pancakes at night? I'm sorry, we all do it once a year. I don't, you know, we can do it the rest of the year, but also wasn't Monday the day

he created the sun? No, that's a good bit of rest to be honest. How dare you, it's the only half of the book you're supposed to know. You know, it's right at the beginning. I forgot a little bit. I like the fact that it was just arbitrary. I'm going to spin this way or I'm going to spin this way. You can't tell a girl what to do.

It was 6pm, end of a long working day. It sounds like someone just hacked out an imperfect planet to meet a deadline. I'm not saying he should have worked unpaid overtime, but maybe it would have been better to admit I haven't finished this year. It's a bigger project than I was anticipating. It's more complicated than the other planets that frankly are hacked together in no time because I couldn't be asked to make them even slightly inhabitable. I mean, you know, that's a very male attitude. So if we do need proof that Gold is male, I think the fact that he just launched Earth at 6pm on the 22nd of October is probably the final, the final proof that we possibly need.

Did God have ADHD? Is that what you're telling me? Yeah, that's why they all had different lights in the year. Just coughs down here. I'm going to go do another one now on board. It should be said for the sake of balance that some experts have cast out on the 6pm 22 October 2004 BC date. What no, I took it as gospel. Suggesting it might have been wrong by somewhere in the 100 million per cent region give or take. Others claim the official launch might actually be at 9.30am on the 23rd of October 4,000 and 4bc and that Godmilly put the earth in position at 6pm on the 22nd,

in order to be ready for the gala launch the following morning, even though he hadn't actually invented mornings at that point, I think I'm right in saying. The launch was not without its problems, of course. No, the gala launch was on the Sunday. All right, okay. You really are rusty. I'm very, very, very happy. God, of course, spent much the next week adding various bits of functionality to his new wob, such as day and night, land and sea, the sun and the moon, plants, animals,

wasps, white, the groove, bass, snark, mistripping, beautiful, breathable, tight, tight. And trains, which were withheld after issues arising from the lack of tracks at the time. But it wasn't long before things started going wrong for the world, as God got impatient and made a couple of new people to keep himself entertained, and the rest is unremittingly squabbly history. And just over 6,000 years later, here we are, and everything is pretty much f***ed. The moral of the story, take your f***ing time.

On the 23rd of October, 1940s. It really brings a new meaning to the phrase garden snake, because if they didn't have trousers, and everything is run by Apple. Well, there you go. Some things never changed. It was predicted in the beginning. Well, because it was in the beginning was word, that. That was Microsoft initially and then of course Apple came in. Yeah. On October 23rd of October 1947, celebrity animator Walt Disney testified to the House Unamerican Activities Committee.

The committee was trying to find out people who indulged in unamerican activities such as compromising, respectfully listening to other people's views, cricket and ordering a small-sive soft drink. And communism, of course. Disney named his own employees that he believed to be communist, including Donald Duck, the nephew of Arch Capitalist Scroogemug Duck. Often goes that way in families. Goofy, the cartoon dog, not sure those much evidence of that more than the fact that he wore a turtle neck and a hat. Oswald, the lucky rabbit, of course, was originally Oswald the idealistic rabbit. Pinocchio, straight out of the Stalinist ministry for truth, and Eor, from the Winnie the Pooh Disney cartoon, Eor short of course for E-galitarianism, transmuting inevitably into authoritarianism. Anyway, all the up-for-all, or before the big thanks to Walt Disney. As always, a section of the vehicle is going straight in the bin.

This week, new world records, there was a sensational world record set a couple of weeks over. The world's largest ever pumpkin. We will have more pumpkin news later. That is a phrase I never thought I'd hear myself say. We look at other records that could be set in the rest of this year, including most simultaneous utterances of the phrase, oh God, we're doomed. Most sincere use of the phrase, I'm sure it will all turn out for the best. Longest strand of spaghetti, that's contingent

on a court case that allows an Italian train company to define the new Melanta Beijing railway as pasta for tax purposes. And most abuse disseminated on social media. New record, the social media user, at 2-true for you, has clocked up his or her or there. Sorry, definitely his 350,000th different individual abused via social media platforms. A total of 3.7 million discrete individual insults, threats and sundry other vituperances, which have been delivered at a rate of around 500 per day since Act 2, true for you, first logged into MySpace in 2003. They realised quite how much easier a Nest Riscuier had become to dispense viciously

worded personal infections, rather than his previous method of waiting for a train or bus to reach his next stop, swearing at someone and then jumping off at True for you tweeted, sorry, X'd that he was humbled to be the new record holder, although the previous record holder at Mr Reality Hammer, X'd in response that X'd to true for you should have crawled under a rock and died. Records still look out for next year, include least dignified election campaign. That section in the bin. Feels like quite a long start that. I mean it was a big bin. It's a really big bin. Big bin. And it's on fire. So I often find, I don't know if you find this as well, that when the news is as it is now, and I think we can fairly say this difficult for comedy,

I find it much easier to write shitloads of bullshit. So that might explain why they're getting us so long this week. Top story this week and yes it's unfortunately still the same top stories it was last week and the same top stories. It'll be for the foreseeable future. And it remains, as I said, awkward to talk about on a comedy show as we talked about last week. I've got how awkward it is. The Middle East situation has not sadly been magically fixed

by a visitation from, I don't know, God coming out of retirement and clarifying exactly who's bit his who's so it's well hang on Biden's old but I know he's not God well Simon Evans on the news quiz laughing points out that Joe Biden is literally older than Israel when he's yes mind blowing but he he's like six years or something. Yeah so he visited and Use some curious language. He described Hamas as the other team At one point and I don't know if he's just trying to appeal to sports fans to stop them watching the sport and pay attention to the world's leading crisis

Instead, but the other team, that's a curious way of putting it in these difficult times. And he also made a prediction that, well, even by the standards of a nocturneurian whose grasp on reality is maybe not quite what would be optimal for a leader of the world's most powerful country, predicted that freedom will win, which was, I mean, one of the most wildly optimistic predictions I've ever heard. I mean, I think freedom at the moment is about 100 to 1 in the betting. It's pretty hard to see how it can win. He did say that terrorists will not win, and I agree with that, because terrorists never win. They just

share defeats more or more widely. And I'm a huge fan of freedom. It's been one of my favourite hobbies throughout my adult life. I really have a big F can do it. And I admire the old man's optimism. But it seems unlikely. I mean, we don't need to go into too much detail on this. But as comedians and citizens of this planet, how have you dealt with the last two weeks?

This social media situation, I think, is out of control. When it first happened, I was like, okay, sort of cautiousness, and then everyone's throwing an opinion and speaking, and you're like, please stop speaking. Now we've moved into a phase where people are saying, actually, you can't get it wrong, so speak up. If you have a platform, you should speak up, you should have a responsibility followed by a list of examples where people have got it wrong and how they should all f*** off and die. So it feels like a bit of an impossible situation to mention anything without mentioning everything. Yes, yeah, no, I do, I agree with that. And yeah, it's basically impossible, I think, to get everything right. If you only say one thing that everyone that you didn't say something for is going to attack you for not saying it, but if you say everything, hey, you're going to be shadow bands, there goes your platform. But be, you

know, you're going to use, if you say nothing, you're gonna be in trouble. If you say one thing, you're gonna be in trouble. If you say everything, then no one's gonna trust that you're not just looking for attention on social media. So there's no win in this situation. Well, Rishi went as well, didn't he? Which is like sending in Rishi soon out to broker peace in the Middle East is like sending in a supply teacher to break up a school fight. No one respects him, he's gonna get fucking wedged. Yes, I know, I've both teams.

He sort of turned up in the Middle East. And it was nice of both Israeli and Palestinian leaders to take some time to give him advice on how to deal with the infighting and the conservative party and offer to send peacekeeping forces for the next time they have a leadership election. That was kind of touching. And given the help as they are at the moment.

He tagged in for Biden essentially after Biden had... Biden had also said he urged Israel not to be consumed by rage, which history suggests is much easier said than done by quite a large margin. And also being told by someone who lives in 2020's America, not to be consumed by rage is that being told by Mariah Carey not to sing quite so many notes or by Flamingo not spend so much time standing on one leg. It just America is a nation I think sets a bad example in that regard.

Maybe his freedom comment was almost him passing a very difficult ball to Rishi. Freedom will win deal with that Rishi, you know, freedom will win. Deal with that, Rishi. Yeah. Go on. Pick that up. Well, Rishi then said to Netanyahu, I hope you win. It's not clear if he meant he hopes he wins his war or his motherload of court cases. It's possible.

It's possible both. And he also said, I know that you are taking every precaution to avoid harming civilians in direct contrast to the terrorists of Hamas. And I think even Netanyahu looked a bit surprised by that and possibly whispered into Soonak's aid. Did you mean every? Because I mean, it's quite clearly not not not every precaution. It's a and I think what I found also is that you know, I've never been very good at multitasking. I'm you know, I have basically a maximum of two possibly three skills in life, if you count making a very good carbonara as one of them. But I've found that I'm better at one aspect

in multitasking, which is that I can think more than one thing is appalling at the same time. And as you say on social media, a lot of people don't seem to have evolved that capability quite yet. Yeah, there needs to be a paperclip. You know, like the paperclip that goes, it looks like you're trying to write a letter, can I help? You need a paperclip that says, it looks like you're engaging in what aboutery. Can I help?

Like, I've thought that way before, you know, this recent round, but it just, when you said there that Rishia tagged in for Biden, it made me think of them as like a wrestling team, and now I need mine bleached to get the idea of where she's in that, and Joe Biden. In those little, in those little, you know, the Atari things.

Yeah. I love it. It's Biden taking a chair and like, You know the Atari things? Yeah. Oh. I love it. It's Biden taking a chair and like smashing it. The first thing I thought when I saw that Rishi had gone was, oh, I bet he took a private plane. That's how much I've been geared to just hate him traveling. It's just going, oh, oh, and how did you get there? Should have walked. Tak taking a small boat mate.

Uh-huh. For those wanting, like, well, certainly me, to find things to take your mind off global problems, a few suggestions from the bugle, other than the obvious of watching as much sport as humanly possible. One option one is to calculate the volume of things. Have you ever wondered what the volume of an orange is, or maybe of a medium-sized dog, perhaps you've long been curious

about the volume in liters of a lamppost, a ballad, or a hedge? Well, if you haven't, now might be a good time to start doing some calculations, because it's going to be a lot more f***ing fun than sitting down to watch the latest update from our Middle East correspondent, Sad Faced Brian. Alternatively, option two is to wonder about sports stars whose names sound most like brand names or diseases. Was Dutch footballer Romeo Zonder van the biggest rival to the Ford Transit in its early days? Have they ever found a cure for Vita's gherolitis?

And is a Skalk, truly edible. Alternatively, option three, learn to play the sitar. Now the reason I say this, it was my birthday recently and I saw my brother at the weekend and he gave me a sitar. It was not a present I was expecting. Sitar is quite a chunky instrument. He'd picked it up in an antique shop. Now I play very, very rudimentary guitar, but I thought, what a weird present. And I thought, well, I mean, it's a notoriously complicated instrument, the Sittar. He knows that, you know, at times like this, I struggle consuming too much news. He's given me something that would take me, I think I could take me out of circulation for five years trying to learn the sitar.

Um, have any of you ever given it a go? No, I love the sound of it. Well, not if you've heard me attempt to play in the new sitar, you would. Oh, we've got, we've got unplayed, unplayed banjos in this house, which is a great ban name. Some people know I play the ukulele, and that's, that's where my stringed instrument journey will stop. Four strings is sufficient. I do not understand how guitars work when you only have five fingers and they have six strings. Like I still, I mean, I'm good at maths and yet that blows my mind. So no, the sattars.

Well, the sattars go. Seems to have about 20 strings on it. Yeah, exactly. It's voodoo. It's magic. I don't understand. Anyway, over the next five years, I'll take you through my journey of failing to learn how to play the sit-off. I think every episode you should do a couple of strums or something. We can just hear it evolve over time. Just a quick question on behalf of the listener. When we're calculating the volume of things, are we literally imagining the lamppost as hollow and filling it with water, or are we imagining the entire lamppost being replaced by liquid

and are we assuming water, so it's a one-to-one ratio of... Just for those that are questioning how we do that, to heal our society. You bring a scientist's approach to this. I hadn't really thought that much. I'll maybe just like put it in a bath and see how much water is displaced. I think you have to get a lamp post shake. Do you know what? That is a great answer.

That is a perfect, that is, that answers everything. Well done. I'm off to find a very large bath tub. Also just the other thing, because some listeners will be irritated by this, and I know I am, goofy is a dog, but Pluto is also a dog, and one is a pet,

and the other one's anthropomorphized. So he just, he had a lot more to answer for than just communism. And I just wanna put that out there, that that. Pluto is the pet, right? Yes, but they're both dogs. Why does one get to talk? And the other one is just a dog.

I don't know, maybe that's a satire on communism in itself. Yeah. Right. Yes, some of us are more equal, but some of us are more equal than others. Other news now so we're going to try and find some little shafts of hope of optimism or distraction over the course of the rest of the rest of the show. Let's start with some new research. Now, we talk a lot about what researchers found on the bugle

and some research is worthwhile. Other research, less worthwhile. I mean, is this bit of research going to be one of the useful ones, like another vaccine formula area, or is it going to be something like carrots grow fast if you play them 1980s poppits? Or if you leave a given, alone in a room with a photocopier at some point, it will photocopy its own arse. Or if you accidentally pick a pack lunch in the large Hadron Collider at Cern and

with it around for half an hour, you might destroy the planet, but you might also end up with a surprisingly drinkable smoothie. Well, I don't know where this new piece of research is going to sit in on that continuum of research pointlessness. But they found that people pay less attention to tasks if they're working alongside a robot. Now, Rhea, as I said, you are a scientist, a qualified scientist, the best kind of scientist. Well, you know what, a robot did my thesis

account. I mean, is this surprising what they found here that some, that, I mean, that people pay less attention if they think a robot is doing it for them? Well, do you know what, I mean, when you actually look into the study, so this is about something called social loafing, which is what we already do when we're working in a team and we think someone else will do more of the work for us and we can still take credit. So we already socially loaf as a as a as a species. It's the main reason I hated teamwork in school because I was the one that did all the work and then I had to share the credit. But then they thought, ooh, will humans see themselves as above robots? Will they

trust a robot? Will they, will they socially love with robot? And what they found is, is that if they first made the robot look like it was doing a good job, then people would socially love. And it doesn't blow my mind. I'm like, really? Oh, no. I mean, but we're trained. We're trained to actually give things over to technology. I mean, when I was growing up as a kid, I had, I don't know, at least a dozen telephone numbers memorized. All my friends, landlines and all that. Now, I couldn't remember, I couldn't tell you a single friend's telephone number. Yeah. I struggled, I struggled to remember my kids' phone numbers and I need those. I mean, the day we all handed a calculator and wrote the word

boobs on it was the day that we handed over any kind of autonomy in trusting our own. And this is the difference between you and me, Tiff, is that you got a calculator and you wrote boobs, but I got a calculator and I wrote boobless because we are dick at those seven, three and extra fives and I forgot about those. Yeah, I get all, you know, we were already, what's interesting about this is the idea that we're like leaving the robots to do it, but we're actually working for the robots already. Right now we are, we are training them, we are working for the robots already. Right now we are we are training them. We are working for them. When you go into Google Capture, that's literally just going human eyes like training the robots to recognize that's a traffic light, that's a motorbike,

that's a bridge, that's a sign, you know, we're already working for them. I already receive all my messages from the machines, like sometimes I feel like they're trying to insult me. Actually my handbag the other day was so heavy when I put it on the front seat of the car. It came up with a message that I needed to, the passenger needed to put their seatbelt on. My handbag is so full of crap. But you know, sometimes I'll go to the, I'll tap my oyster card and it'll say incomplete journey and I view that as spiritual advice. So that's where I get most of my modern philosophy. If the computer says accept cookies, I'm going to have cookies. I'm just, I'm taking it all on.

Am I the only one that has a higher expectation of robots than people? I mean, this doesn't surprise me as a study. Yeah, I mean, that's what robots are for, isn't it? I mean, to do stuff better than us. At least that's what they're for in the current interim period between us inventing them specifically so we can slack off and then take it over the planet and make our children and their children work

their asses off for them. So I mean, that's, we're in the sweet spot right now aren't we? I'm sorry but I mean again as a tech geek as an autistic I do not think we'll be working for the robots in the future because the robots wouldn't have us. Have you seen us? We're inconsistent we have no attention spans what robot would go and we will get the humans to do some of these jobs? What? Good point, that's a good point.

I know, you know, also, you know. Maybe we'll be used as a power source. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha you have a good energy on it. That could work. But will it be an onshore hamster wheel or an offshore hamster wheel? You can't have an offshore hamster, can you? Well that's lethal. Isn't that beaver? I don't believe it. Beaver's don't live in the sea.

What would be the version of a hat? What's the closest then to a... What is the hamster of the sea? I mean, you don't really get... What is the hamster of the sea? I mean, you don't really get... What is the hamster of the sea? It's got to be a pufferfish, because when a hamster puts all that food in its mouth, just like a pufferfish.

But it's not a great thing to put on your poster as a species. It's the hamster of the sea. Otter! I think they're still fresh water. Otter, you have no otters. You do get sea otters. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. You do get sea otters. You do get sea otters. Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah.

I've seen those guys. Yeah, the chunky, they can be quite vicious, but they're also very cute. Yeah. So like a hamster. I mean, well, you know what, you cannot be distracted by the cuteness. That's how Rishi Soonerby came prime minister.

We were like, oh, that is so cute. Dishy, was they called Dishy Rishi? Whatishy, what's it called, Dishy Rishi? What? During the pandemic. I think it was the e-dout to help out that game. Yeah. But I mean, of course this happens that we rely on technology. I know, if there's a toaster in my kitchen, I put less effort into glaring at the bread,

so the intensity of my stare. We rely on technology. But the toaster makes you take it out and butter it yourself. There are other things that make people pay less attention at their desks from my 11.5 month experience of having an actual job, one of which is having a TV in your office that your boss couldn't see and they're being sport on that TV. Another was not giving a flying f*** about your job and also another thing was thinking that your job, your boss and your company were

all complete waste of time and indeed space. So those also dipped the productivity level I found. Pokemon News now and well mayhem in Amsterdam due to a clash of civilizations between Vincent Van Gogh, the celebrity painter from the 19th century, and pockymons. This was after a fictional cartoon, Weird Tailed Sudo-Rodent, brought the Vangoff Museum to an absolute standstill. They had to stop selling limited edition, limited edition pockymon cards of Pikachu in the style of Vincent Vangoff's self-portrait with a grey felt hat hat because it caused safety concerns due to the, well, kind of, I don't know how to describe this. I mean, Mayhem seems, seems appropriate, but people were so desperate to get their, these, these, these limited edition pocketmon cards

that they brought an art gallery to a complete standstill. Is this, is this the logical end point of all human civilization? Where can we ever look ourselves in the face as a species again and think we are worth persevering with? If we end up with scenes of violence over a Pikachu dressed as Vincent Van Gogh. Well, listen, he can walk a grey-f felt hat. I think, you know, like, can he wear it? Is he slaying? Yes. Yes. It was actually a free card they gave away after a treasure hunt. So that's what people were going mad for. So you had to go and visit the exhibition, which is quite clever, you know, do the treasure hunt. And now they've stopped. But I sort of think of the museum,

oh, and we've got two popular and everyone was having too much fun. Oh, it should not be fun, that's what that sort of feels like. Like there were kids who were going who'd never been in spite of living right next to the museum. So if they get to see Pokemon and they get to see Vangoff, that's a good idea. Like I think there should be more of that, like engaging like kid stuff with art.

Imagine if the Muppets recreated some of the masters. I'd buy all of those, or a garbage-pale kids version of the Last Supper, and the Apostles would be like Cheapy, junk food, John, and Splat-Matt. That would be amazing. I want someone to make that, please. But I did think whatever connects people to the classics is is a good thing, right? You know, why why they complaining? It's too popular. I have to say my first incident was despair that this is where we have to sink to get people to come into a museum is is to combine it with Pokemon. It blows my mind that there were people who lived next door that went, yeah, is to combine it with Pokemon.

It blows my mind that there were people who lived next door that went, yeah, we never thought about going until Pokemon came to town. So I don't know. I mean, but at the same time, I think you're right, Tiff, I would go to the portrait. I live near the portrait gallery, the National Portrait Gallery. I've never been in and you're right

if they'd put more interesting people in there. I don't need to see the Queen seven times. I've got stamps. You know what I mean? Look, how many people buy the pictures of dogs dressed as royalty, or cats as kings and queens? No, you're not wrong. You're not wrong.

You've got to mix this up. I mean, if they put all the memes, if they had a meme gallery, I'd go to that. So I'm, you know, I the memes, if they had a meme gallery, I'd go to that. So, I'm, you know, I'm as bad as, as, as my judgment. I went to the McGreet Museum when I was in Brussels and that was incredible. But, you know, I'm, you know, yeah, like if you're someone that loves it, then you'll seek it out. But if you, in terms of engaging new people and just how we do, like you're like, you know, like an art gallery,

a picture is like a, like a meme that you could just stare at for 90 seconds. Instead of painting is like a meme you could stare at. I particularly liked at the Macroo Museum the Susi Neh Pat and Tamagotchi, so, particularly moving people. Does it, who, who keeps it alive overnight? Oh, I thought. Um... Does it? Who keeps it alive overnight? Oh.

I don't know. Well, it's not Tamagotchi, is it? It's just a painting of a Tamagotchi. So it's forever alive, but also forever dead. Well, that's not shroding us. Tamagotchi. Tamagotchi. They are in the air.

Someone from the Van Gogh music. Van Gogh music seems it's even busier than the Vermeer and you've got to feel sorry for poor old Johnny Vermeer. Slogged his paint he guts out in the mid-17th century trying to perfect his art his craft. Dying in only achieving true fame a couple of hundred years after he lived. Now finding himself on the undercard to some fictional cartoon characters who couldn't paint a pearl airing if their non-existent lives depended on it. What a waste, what a waste to live. I'm fine with all of it as long as Pikachu doesn't slice his own ear off. Okay, I'm just worried about the state of his mental health. From what I remember about the Pokemon, there was one called Bulbasaur who was squat reptilian

and stubborn, which I thought was an obvious parody of Vladimir Putin. There was Ivysaur who I think was implicated in the Kennedy hit from memory. I can't get it all, but I was reading a book at the same time, I can't quite remember. There was one called Del Cati, which apparently prefers to live completely free of priorities doing only what it pleases at its own pace. And I think the influence of that led to Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister. You can draw the dots between that failure. There was Priapico, the hornyster of the Pokemon. Horny? Horny is it? Yeah. That was decommissioned after it flashed, it could keep being a service. But I go and see that artwork.

Moving on now to priest versus pumpkin news, and well I mean this is a rivalry as old as time itself, a parish priest has had to apologize to local children in the Czech Republic after stamping all over Halloween pumpkins near his church claiming that he was protecting the children by removing satanic symbols which I mean is that not a slight overreaction to a Halloween pumpkin? I mean, how quite, how also, as long-term bugleers will know, I mean, the research we've done on the show shows that Halloween was in fact a Christian festival and goes back to when a teenage Jesus turned his mates head into a pumpkin and then told the problem.

It's my favourite time of the year. This is where the Scots and the Irish argue over a who invented Halloween while the Americans get furious in the comments. It's a fun time to sit back and watch that. But also, what you have to remember Andy about this, you think this is an overreaction, but pumpkin spice lattes are a premium right now, so you just gotta do what you can. Well, he could be in with big pumpkin. He could be in with Starbucks. They are the Spice Melange of basic Instagram posts

at this time of the year, you know. I mean, it's quite an impressive display, when you say, because I'm looking at the photos. There's quite a lot of pumpkins there, and he's really gone at them hard. And you know what, I'm gonna be honest, I'm relieved. So the Czech Republic, Czech, no, it's Czechia now, isn't it? Czechia is not known for being that religious. So here we have this, this random Catholic priest in the middle of, of Czechia, trying to protect children from evil

and, and normally they are the evil, aren't they? The Catholic and normally they are the evil aren't they the Catholic priest They are the evil that put children in danger So the fact looking at the picture and I'm relieved to see that he stamped on all of the pumpkins because if he stamped on all of them But one or two I'd be like go check on those children and make sure they're okay because that's that's a weird favor Tissum that he's displaying there so luckily he hates children, and I think this is something that should be celebrated. Well, you said earlier, Andy, about the football teams and stuff. Do you think he was like, you know, he's a priest, he's like, listen, this is satanic.

I'm team God, that's not my team. And when it's not your team, people do mad stuff like, and this is genuinely true. Once I saw some Rangers fans, this is a European Cup Final and they were playing some Petersburg I think. I saw some Rangers fans kicking in a carling sign because it was green. Right. So you got to think like if it's the opposing team, the level that people are willing to go to to to destroy the memorabilia and it's if it's pumpkin's be memorabilia of the

Oh, what's the work of why can't I think of the word? What's the stuff you bought merch? That's it. Yes. The other team's merchandise. He's literally just destroying the other team's merchandise. He's literally just destroying the other team's merchandise. Wow. I mean, I know it happened in Ireland that they hate, you know, this whole orange, you know, thing, like that it's made it all the way to Chetja. Wee. Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, he made an absolute mess of these, these, two days running apparently, as well. I'm looking at the photos, it's possible

also that he didn't have anything to do with it and the pumpkins just made rugby against each other. That is also a possibility. We'll have to wait for the forensics to come back. I think I think his footmark and his, well, more importantly, his confession, something that they do, do a lot of in the Catholic church. I think that kind of closed the case they're ending. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, that would be a weird thing to hear in confession. I'll just mash up a pumpkin, really. Do you think he like runs between the two boxes when he confesses to himself?

Or does he just stay in the one box? No, I'm not sure. Because now, you know, given what we now know, a lot of Catholic priests have done, there must be a sort of rotating confession box where it just automatically spins from one side to the other so that you can confess to yourself. I don't know if you have to do it at the speed of sound so that you could hear your own confession coming back into your, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I thought it was a crazy comment. I like the headline for this that just said, village priest sorry for smashing pumpkins and I was like they weren't that bad a band, you

don't have to come out and apologize. Oh yeah there's other bands you want to apologize for before that, certainly. So I mentioned earlier on that a new world record was set for the largest ever pumpkin. That was set in Minnesota by a Minnesota-based pumpkin edition. 1.4 tons of pure pumpkin. That is the superhero of the world that needs right now, slower than a speeding bullet, less powerful than a locomotive,

unable to leap small buildings, let alone tall ones in a single bound, but heavier than a Ford Fiesta and nobly, really, really nobli. Two thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds worth of pumpkins. Another world record was set for the largest mosaic made of pumpkins this week in England. Ten thousand pumpkins and squashes were involved in a mosaic. I mean, it does feel like we are really reaching for ever more ludicrous

world. I mean, can that, does that really count? Largest mosaic of pumpkins? I'm not sure. Don't hate on the season, Andy. Sorry. You're hating on the season. You get into it. Have them. Do what I do this time every year is have about five or six pumpkin lattes forget that you've drunk them and then have a complete panic attack when you pee orange I think you're dying Does it make your pico orange? Yeah like really yeah I'd argue that that whatever is in your pumpkin spice latte has had very little to do with pumpkin Latte has had very little to do with pumpkin. But yeah, it is the, I kind of enjoy this time of year in Muzzwell Hill because the kids come around trickle-treating

and they're so middle class. Like one year I had a girl knock on the door. I gave her some chocolate. Sorry, is this capri is no thanks? No, yes. What's she wanting? Green and black? Green and black, you know. Give me something fancy. Ritter sport or nothing. Crime news now, and well, exciting bit of crime in Poland, which police have arrested a man who pretended to be a mannequin,

stood in a shop window until the shop was closed and then stole stuff from the shop. What was most impressive? It's obviously stood in the shop window holding a bag like a mannequin would. What was most impressive about it was how little he looks like a mannequin. Because mannequins generally quite smartly dressed, especially in a fucking clothes shop. And this guy, I'm not in a position to give people some fashion or smartness advice. But if you're going to pretend to be a mannequin, put some effort in.

Yeah, but smart yourself up, smooth your face a bit. You know, get, get, get, get, sort your hair out. I would just stand there in a scruffy looking t-shirt holding a bag. It was pathetic for me. LAUGHTER I'm into this.

I don't, did anyone else feel like this is like this is a plot of an 80s romantic comedy? Just a bloat trying to make a woman fall in love with him while nothing's going to stop us now, plays? I mean, is this on the guy in the window or is this on everybody else who didn't notice? Do you know what I mean? Like, he did... How did he get away with that? And you deserve to be stolen from him if you don't notice it. There was a breathing mannequin in your front window.

But I kind of think this guy's iconic and elegant because it wasn't just robbing from a jewelry store. He also, on another occasion, he says, he went to a restaurant to eat before slipping under the roller-shut as at the entrance to a store to swap his clothes for new ones. This sounds like it's like a prank show. Like are we sure this is a genuine crime has happened? Because I kind of like the refreshing old-school cat burglar vibe, you know? It's funny that he does this trick in order to like steal clothing because if he just came to Covent Garden he could just stand still and make a fortune.

Elections news now and well let's stay in Poland for, well the results of the recent Poland election and at the moment we take any little morsel of hope here at the Bugle. I will admit I'm not intimately familiar with Polish politics, but anytime I read the words far right populist party does less well than last time, I'm more than happy to jump on board. The Polish election recently had a record turn out 74% the highest since the fall of communism, 85% of voters in Warsaw voted and the right wing Lauren Justice party looks set to lose its place as Poland's government. It's by getting more votes than any other party. It's going to be unable to form a coalition and Donald Tusk's civic coalition centrist party is set

to lead a new government. I mean, it's been a tough time to be not a fan of right-wing populist politics in the world in the last ten years or so. So at least this feels like a moment of light in what has been a difficult time for Europe as a continent and humanity as a species. For me what I thought was fascinating about this, which I thought was very clever and I think we need to spread the word about this, is that the way that the opposition told their young – and first of all it's younger voters. It's younger voters that really came out in mass

in larger numbers than they ever had before. I think it was something like 68, 69% of them came out versus 46% in the last election. But what they told them to do was deregister. So they're all living in Warsaw, living their young happy lives. And they said, deregister from being a voter in Warsaw and go out and go to this constituency and

that constituency and just basically they did the opposite of gerrymandering and I love them for it. They just went screw gerrymandering. You go and register in all of these places. So they all went and registered in different places. They had to keep the polls open. And I think the last vote was cast at 241 in the morning because they weren't expecting that many voters But they had to keep the lines open and then the community came out and they were feeding people in the line and then pizza You know pizza company came and gave everybody free pizza and then everyone went oh my god the pizza people They're so nice. So then they all gave the pizza company money and then the pizza company went we don't need all this money

So they gave it to charity like it was this beautiful, domino knock on effect of positivity and and wonderfulness. And they, they, they, they got the, the party that they didn't want out of government. And I think it's important for people to know that I mean, okay, we say far right. And I suspect that most viewers listening are all on, we're all on the same team as we've been saying in terms of not wanting them in. But this particular party, the PIS, they almost completely abandoned abortion a couple of years ago. They were not happy following EU rules, and they were even making noises about taking Poland out of the EU.

And again, Poland, quite rightly, just went, ah, excuse me. I don't know if you saw what happened to the UK, but it would have happened without decision, especially because we need to work in places like that. We all would go out there and work in places like that. But bottom line, I think that the take home from the story is if you want to get a job done, hire the Polish because they get it done. But I was upset by the headline,

which just said, women in youth force piss from power. And I thought, could we work on that guys as headlines go? Not the greatest. Well that brings us to the end of this week's bugle. Thank you very much for listening. We'll be back next week with Nishkooma and Harikonda Bolo. If you want to hear more of me, the news quiz finishes its series this coming week and you can hear past episodes on BBC Sounds or after a few weeks on other podcast apps. We will have news of some live bugle shows early next year, hopefully within the next week or two. So watch this audio space, we will have details on that very soon.

So watch this audio space, we will have details on that very soon. Tiff, anything to plug? Well you should listen to some episodes of Catharsis. They're there, they're out there in the, as part of the Bugal Network. So have a listen to those, catch up on those. I have some shows coming up, Old Rope and also I'm in a film. So if you like comedy horror, go check out Slaunderhouse it's out on Hulu in the US I think and I'm paramount in the UK so it's very silly and fun so you know it's Halloween so I am on tour still sort of UK in

Europe because I know a lot of people are listening from all over the world, but please find me on social media and say hi anyway. I'd love to say hi. Every so often I have a bugle or show up at a show and it's so exciting to meet you all in person, but I'm going to be on tour. I'm about to announce a whole bunch more dates around the UK and Europe, so keep an eye out for that. Thank you for listening. Bueglers, if you want to join the Bugle Voluntary subscription scheme to help keep this show free flourishing and independent So keep an eye out for that. ask Andy show where I field all the questions you can possibly ask. Apart from the ones I choose not to answer for reasons, I'll keep to myself. Anyway, so do do that. Thank you for all of those who do contribute to the bugle and we'll be back next week. Good bye. you