The Bugle - Shroedinger’s President: 12 minutes in a McDonald's Drive-Thru?

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Joe Biden steps aside and Kamala Harris steps up. Celebrities line up to give Harris their approval, while an interesting vote of confidence for Donald Trump from his running mate comes to light.CloudStrike reveals how fragile every element of your life is, but humanity can fight back against tech via the medium of fishcakes. Stressed? Thank your favourite deity that the Olympics are here to distract us. The Bugle will return after a summer recess.Written and presented by:Andy ZaltzmanJackie KashianTiff StevensonAnd produced by Rich Jarman, Chris Skinner and Laura Turner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ah ah ah ah ah! The Bugle The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4312 of The Bugle, the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a world which whilst at least 99.94% visual, still can't actually see what it has become. I'm Andy Zoltzman, and on today's show, amongst the infinite number of things we will not be talking about, we'll be steering clear of the history of tablecloths, great controversies

in 1930s motorcycling, whether the Bible contains hidden messages revealing that rollerblades were invented in Babylon in 628 BC, Leonardo da Vinci's characteristically avant-garde plans for an inflatable helium-filled bouncy castle that could float around Italy for both military and recreational purposes, and the musculoskeletal structure of the snotivarian tree lobster. But still, plenty of other stuff to talk about, with my two wonderful guests returning to the Bugle from here in London, Tiffany Stevenson. Hello Tiff, how are you? Hello, hi, from my sweltering little book nook, well not a euphemism.

Family show. Yeah, I mean it's been a pretty damp, cold summer, so can we use the term summer? Yeah, but it is currently a little bit toasty. Lucy, I will not complain actually about this because I've been complaining about the lack of sunshine. So the fact that we have anything even vaguely resembling heat is very pleasing to me. This is the weather I thrive in. I thrive in this kind of, I grow, there's a lot of growth for me in this, I'm like mold. Joining us from all the way over there and I'm pointing towards the west coast of the USA in the city where summer never sleeps, Los Angeles. Welcome to the bugle for the very first time, Jackie Cation. Hello Jackie. Hello, I'm coming from in front of my husband's Hot Wheel collection. Hello I'm coming from in front of my husband's hot wheel collection. Is that something? He likes a character car. He likes a car that means that the car is representing not the car that Spider-man would drive but the car that Spider-man would be if he were a car. It is such a niche hot wheel collection I can't even express. I'm psyched to be here. Thank you for having me.

I don't think we've ever had someone who's recorded in front of a lot of Hot Wheels before. So this is a landmark moment in broadcasting. And I need to ask what the weather's like in Los Angeles in July? Oh, yes. It is when we are closest to the sun. And so it is 9 a.mam and it is already 87 degrees. Too much. Warm, physically very warm you guys. But you have this magical thing called air conditioning there which we don't have here

so that's... That's so weird, you guys are older. You would have thought that you would have invented it earlier. Get involved. Yeah, well I think that's what the design of Stonehenge was essentially just to get a nice breeze going through. But you know we haven't really progressed in the last what four and a half thousand years since we built it. That's classic British. We are recording on the 23rd of July 2024.

On the 23rd of July 1926 Fox Film bought the patents of the movie tone sound system, which enabled sound to be recorded onto film and with hindsight. We can say that it was at this point that the release of Smurfs 2 became inevitable rather than merely probable. And now, 98 years later, I do think it's fair to ask, has humanity benefited from that deal 98 years ago? I mean, there's been ups and downs, pros and cons for sure. The sheer enormity of podcasts, I think, speaks to the negative. I have two. I have two. It's not okay.

Only two? That's below the global average for all people, I think. I think we're just about to go through the 20 billion weekly podcasts, Mark. The number of podcasts should, like, supersede the amount of relationships you've been in. I think that's the technical gauge. Oh, okay, then I'm doing good. I'm not socially great. I've topped out at one, which is entirely appropriate. But I think putting sound on film clearly has overall made us less productive as a species, and to prove this, let's look at the life

of Benjamin Franklin, writer, inventor, printer, publisher, scientist, diplomat, politician, philosopher, founding daddy, stroke father, depending on how familiar you are with the USA, independence declaration drafter, musician, fire safety pioneer, chess player, librarian, relationship guidance counselor, mullet sporting head style trendsetter. He got shit done, but he didn't have the option of watching 34 consecutive episodes of Celebrity Stockholm Syndrome or Antique Vile Smashers Go Large or My Favorite Rabbi or The Real Alvin and the Chipmunks. So, you know, have we benefited? I'm not sure we have. He was the first guy to collect stamps.

Right. So, I guess you found it the most. All right. He's the OG nerd. Is that what you're saying to me? Oh, for sure. Are you kidding me? He was the OG nerd who was also grooming people. And he is the founder of the reason for the Me Too movement here in the United States. He crammed a lot in. I know he lived a long time, but he still crammed a lot in. That's what she said. Family show, Jackie. Family show.

As always, oh no, I haven't written a section in the bin. Would you believe that? Oh, I forgot. Well, the section in the bin is going in the bin, buglers. Well, the section in the bin is going in the bin, buglers. This is the last episode of Before Our Summer Hiatus at a bit of slightly run out of steam. So there we go. The section in the bin is having a week off. It's in the bin. Top story this week. The passage of time one, Joe Biden nil.

We've finally seen the culmination of Joe Biden's defiant and in many ways heroic struggle against the passage of time. I'm not a fan of it either, Joe, but it tends not to negotiate. And Biden has finally announced that he will step aside from the presidential campaign to spend a bit less time being accused of being too old and too mad by an old and mad man into the breach to try to win the election and to take a minimum of four months of unrelenting partisan personal abuse. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now set to try to defeat Donald Trump, Jackie is our American politics correspondent on your first time on the show. Can she do it?

Well, he is a felon and she is a cop She's a prosecutor it's a match made in heaven and I always you know to go back to the to the UK I always think of him Captain knob job as the witch king and so remember what the witch king said no man can kill me die now and she is no man so she's got a shot she's got a shot and she is a win and I call cops murder hornets myself just because we had murder hornets for a while and and there's but but I think that she is the kind of cop that could be a murder

hornet but she could also be a Social worker be she can be a caterpillar of community. She's got a lot of bugs inside of her And so I just think that with what she's done with the with the police in California I think that there's there's hope I think she's got a shot is what I'm saying But she will always be black and she will always be a woman. So there's trouble. I'm glad that she's only got four months though, because I'm like just making a finite amount of time for the lies and the vitriol. Women can multitask, you can get a lot done in four months as a woman, I think.

This is promising. I mean, the bugle is not in a position to criticize anyone or anything for going on way too long, given that we are a podcast that's now been going nearly 17 years. But quite a while it took until late July 2024 for Biden and the Democrats to realize that by late July 2024, Biden would be struggling to convince anyone that he would be a viable president in, for example, late July 2028. Well, I mean, let's just ascribe that, Tiff, to America being America with its unerring and unshiftable instinct towards acting against its own best interest. Is that a fair assessment? You've spent a lot of time in America, Tiff. I think so. I mean, I like that when it finally came down to it, he was at the beach house,

and he had his bestie come over to lay it all out to him. So it was like the plot of the film Be his bestie come over to lay it all out to him. So it was like the plot of the film Beaches with Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey. That's very much how I imagined it. And then he basically gave aid, a one minute notice of his exit and Missy Elliot always warned us about the one minute man. We shouldn't, we shouldn't respect the one minute man, but as someone who's been through a long and protracted Brexit, I'm in favour of a quick withdrawal When you're out you're out. So basically it's a bit confusing though, because obviously they haven't invoked the 25th So he's still fit to run the country, but not run the country in a little while

So I'm trying to sort of work out it kind of feels like Bynes alive, but simultaneously his hope of running is dead. So he's Schrodinger's president. Yeah well that's a nice way of putting it. I guess he's just hoping maybe just like a car like an electric car that's got you know I don't know 12% battery left. You've just got to manage it through to the end of the journey so hopefully can make it to January. You might spend that last 12 minutes going through the drive through at McDonald's. You don't know what he does with these last four months. And I mean, if you think about it, what Donald Trump did with his four years

and the plethora of executive orders, he could create justice, you know, on his way out. He's like, oh, by the way, everybody's going to be even freer. Could you do an executive order to say a criminal can't be president? A convicted felon like with Trump? Could he do that? Unfortunately, the third branch of the United States is broken. They have decided to become kingmakers. And while I am okay with a little bit of capitalism and a little bit of socialism, I'm not good with any monarchies. You just didn't give it enough time, Jackie.

Right. Well, I think she's got a good shot as I'm going to say speaking as a stepmother. I'm excited by the fact that Kamala's in it. I mean, she's been criticized for that, but I think stepmom as president is an excellent solution. You know, she's used to dealing with challenges. She's going to be an expert diplomat, the ability to be fully present and loving, yet also realistic. Imagine this scenario, like you've got a teenager who wants their biological parent to come

for Christmas dinner. That is basically a UN summit where everyone hints at their grievances through gritted smiles. She's going to be used to these scenarios playing out for her. You know, it shouldn't be viewed as a negative. It should be viewed as a positive that she has this role in people's lives. And like I say, she's a woman, she can multitask, she can get a lot of stuff done, you know, because we do spend a lot of time, stepmums in our

castles talking to our enchanted mirrors. So that's probably where she'll get most of her advice from during this. But I know that that is going to be, it's going to be interesting to see how I feel because that's going to be used as a real stick to beat her with over the next sort of four months or so. The greatest thing about stepmothers is that while someone is screaming, you're not the real president, she's also putting dinner on the table. Such valuable life experience. What's going to say to you talk about the the enchanted mirrors, I mean, I think if she does get into the White House, she wants to put some new mirrors in, because those mirrors will have seen some truly appalling things between 2017 and 21. The thing that they've come up with so far as the main attack on her seems to be a cobbled together video of her laughing.

Yes. And is this who you want as president? What someone that can experience joy? I don't understand. It's so different. Yes. Well, as you can imagine, the way the Republicans are responding to this, there's going to be, you know, obviously the respect for the office is going to be very prevalent and they're

just going to be incredibly mature now that she's actually in the race. I can't believe, yeah, I've seen some of the attacks already and they are a not true and of course be have the maturity of a five-year-old with a handgun. So they've grown up a little bit. Oh yeah! They've grown up a little bit. In terms of who has come out to support Kamala Harris, the Democrats very rapidly coalesced behind her, although there had been some talk there might be a sort of micro speed primary, but that isn't going to happen.

She's raked in over a hundred million dollars Between Sunday and Monday evening over a million unique donors over 60% of them first-time Contributors, which I guess has given that campaign a you know a bit of early momentum clearly It's going to be difficult to beat Trump the undisputed da Vinci of division the Caravaggio of cantankerousness The Vincent van Gogh of viciously vituperative goading the the Pablo Picasso of provocative beef, the Egon Schiele of egotistical showboating, the, no I've got to end it there, I have to end it there before more figures of art are betrayed. A lot of celebrities have come out in favour of Carmen Harris as well. Charlie XCX, is that pronounced Charlie 9010 or Charlie 10 110? I like that you're like a lot of celebrities and then you name someone I've never heard.

Also, some people I've never heard of have also come out in favour of him. Beyoncé has given Carmen Harris permission to use her song Freedom for her presidential campaign which contrasts with the number of musical acts who have told Trump not to use their out, which include, and this is by no means an exhaustive list, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Sinead O'Connor, Leonard Cohen, Farrell Williams, Chazendave, Rod Jane and Freddie, most Wales, all Nightingales and pretty much everyone else in the musical universe, I think, but Beyonce is on board. Cardi B is also on the Carmelar train.

She tweeted, I'm not sure actually what outlet this one's in, let's go! I told you all Carmelar was supposed to be the 2024 candidate. So that's some big figures from contemporary music and also, you know, some very prominent young women. And this is something, you know, that might be a real strength for Carmilla Harris is how she's been in favor. And I know we have many old male Republican listeners on the bugle. It's our key target demographic.

And it might be quite hard for those of you who are an old male Republican bugle. It's our key target demographic. It might be quite hard for those of you who are an old male Republican bugle listener to understand, but Carmen Harris has been in favor of women being allowed to choose what to do with their own bodies. Interesting. Here's what I do know is that this might be the last time we get to vote as women Project 2025. So get out the vote, ladies. Please register to vote. Well, there was a lot of that that sort of went down around the Republican Convention as well. It feels like it's been three years in terms of politics.

Did you guys watch any of the RNC? No, I'm from Milwaukee, so I can't possibly, I couldn't possibly watch them walk through my town. And then there was the big outage and they were all trapped there. I was myself weaned on a nice lager at a ho-ho. But all the bars right around the convention center had drag shows so that they wouldn't come in. Well, I watched a bit of it and it was like Bonkers Peak USA.

So the bits that I saw was Hulk Hogan ripping off his vest to excitingly reveal another vest underneath like the world's shittest stripper. JD Vance's wife, Usher, watching Kid Rock, and you could literally see her soul leaving her body as he was singing. And one of the lyrics, apparently, was, smell the aroma, check my hits, it stinks in here because Trump's the shit. Wow. Old people do fart a lot, so I guess there's that. Because now that Biden's out, Trump looks so old, right? He looks so old.

Well, I mean, this is one of the interesting things with Kamala Harris. Not only could she become the first woman to be president and only the second person of colour to be president, but even more extraordinarily for America, she could and only the second person of color to be president, but even more extraordinarily for America, she could be only the second person born after 1946 to be president. Is America ready for another young person under the age of 78? A Gen X president is exactly what we need. A Gen X or that, I'm sort of not millennial, I'm in that bit in between, which I call the taint, because I'm not quite generation gooch.

But I think we should have a Gen X, so that's exactly the kind of energy we need, push things forwards. I will say this, my father, when I asked him who he was gonna vote for, it was Hillary and Agent Orange, I asked and he said, well, she's not hot, but she's overqualified. And in this case, Kamala is both hot and overqualified. I haven't checked in with him yet though. Because Biden was willing to step aside and let Kamala take over, it reminded me,

I hope it reminds me of George Washington more than Jimmy Carter, quite honestly, but it reminds me a little bit of both. But George Washington was the first one who ever, initially, that's what made the United States so unique, is that he stepped aside. I mean, the Republican party, the idea is that the Republican party is no longer interested

in a representative Democratic Republic, which, you know, in the long run is fine because the good news is, is that it's just going to lead to world war three. And finally the Germans are going to get to be the good guys. Right. I mean, based on a very real thing of mine, where I think if you admit the worst thing you ever did, you get to be the hero in the sequel. So good for the Germans.

I say good for the Germans. Talking about Nazis, didn't Trump's own running partner, his pick, his VP, isn't he on record calling Trump a Nazi? He said he compared him to Hitler for sure. And in a positive way, which is rarely done. Rarely done. And we're thinking about JD Vance or JP Morgan, whatever his name is. I thought he was a romance writer. If that was, I'm in airports and I see that name. That guy, 39 years old and already just full of hate all the way up to his nose. I was like, how did it happen? Who raised that? Congratulations. I think it started with when they named him after an off-brand budget whiskey. That's what he sounds like. But apparently he was very liberal. And so what he said about Trump

in the beginning was, he described him as a Nazi, described him as cultural heroine, offering false promises to the white working class. And then apparently met up with Trump, you know, a few years down the line when he was running for Senate, I think, and said, and Trump explained to him that Trump actually understood more about the struggles of white working class people than someone who was born and raised in a white working class community.

And JD went, oh, okay, yeah. Will you endorse me? Yeah, so. Oh my gosh. I love it when people say, well, I used to be a liberal. And I was like, no, no, you weren't. It turns out you were absolutely, you, uh, because that should lead quite honestly to you going, nobody's as liberal as I am. Nobody wants, and because you do make compromises and as you go through life and you're just like, oh well I guess I do believe in, I mean granted I don't want to get pushed down by a pile of 14

year olds and have them steal my bag so that doesn't make me soft on crime but there's no way he was ever a liberal, not a chance. But he wrote the book Hillbilly Elegy didn't he? Which contains now, if you don't know, this contains this piece of dialogue, it's in the book, it's in the film. Everyone in this world is one of three kinds, a good Terminator, a bad Terminator or neutral. Now, I don't think you've seen the Terminator films. I don't think poor Glenn Close had to say that in a bad wig and Deidre Barlow glasses, good terminator, bad terminator or neutral. And there is no neutral terminator.

Or is he talking about abortions? Is that what he's talking about by terminator? Because I know he's obsessed with that, which is an interesting dilemma, isn't it, to pose to those kinds of people, you know, anti-choices, like would you abort a fetus if you knew it was going to grow up to be a doctor who performed abortions? I saw a clip where Kamala actually asked him, she said, are you interested in any legislation that would control a man's body? And he goes, um, I would answer a specific question about that. In other words, no, no, he has not yet. Not even which hand you're jerking off with. No one can even think of an example because it doesn't exist.

When they asked him if abortion laws should allow exceptions for rape and incest, he said, because we just need to know what we're, what we're dealing with here. What like the type of person they said, when if abortion laws should allow exceptions for raping incest, he said, two wrongs don't make a right. Oh, okay. Do you support the death penalty JD? Yes. Oh, with no exceptions. Oh, well, that seems inconsistent. I understand that you want to either control or kill women. There's a lot of legislation around the United States right now at a state level that describes what I am as just a couple of holes in a haircut and it starts bitches man they just don't listen and then it goes into how

they want to control. So and being anti-IVF which is again make it make sense it's baffling because obviously if you're saying like, you know, religiously, you know, you talk about your religion and part of that is go forth and multiply, but not like that, not with health. We must have no IVF. And he also said, and this for me, I think, I think the Democrats can really flip this to their advantage, but a couple of years ago, he said, we are effectively running this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they've made.

And that's just a basic fact. He's gone full speaking as a mother there. But they did a study at the LSE, London School of Economics here, and found that unmarried child-free women were the happiest population of all. Women stay joyful, buy a cat. Facts don't care about your feelings, MAGA. It's interesting because that only seems to apply again to liberals, not any of the people in the MAGA base who are also child-free. I know that MAGA have, they want to be anti-elite or JD Vance at least wants to be anti-elite, or JD Vance at least, wants to be anti-elite, which I always find baffling to kind of go, Trump's not the elite. If you go by the strict

definition of the elite as being the most powerful in society, capable of taking away your freedom of thought and decision making. So why are you trying to take away choice from an individual, you know, or take away choice from a woman over what she wants to do with her own body? That's the ultimate elitist act, is for you to take choice away. And obviously I get quite passionate about this, but this is what I think, this is how I think the Democrats can turn this to their advantage, right? I think all of the cat women and men of America should rise up. We had in the UK, we had dogs at polling stations, US need to have cats are casting. The cats have cats are casting.

Cats are off to cast their ballots. Well, we will be providing globally exclusive coverage of the rest of the presidential campaign. I think we're the only media outlet that will be doing that once we return after our summer hiatus to see if Donald Trump can indeed bring people together. That claim to me, he will unify America, that I think is objectively fair to say as a claim is up there with the Marvel franchise claiming that the only motivating factor in their movies is an incorrigible love of arthouse cinema. It just doesn't stack up for me. Fragility of all human existence news now, and it turns out that humanity is basically held together by

basically looking at all the computers in the world with our fingers crossed saying, please don't destroy us. We've just witnessed one of the greatest IT failures in the entire 13 billion year history of the universe, or 6,000 year history of the world, delete according to the number of loyalty points you've earned from your local creationism society. Now obviously IT failures are a relatively modern entry into the annals of human chaos, but still, even if Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace had invented the ZX Spectrum in 13 billion BC rather than 1982 or whenever it was, this would still be right up there.

It was a botched software update. Is there any other kind? Well, yes, but we tend not to notice them. So effectively, no, there is no other kind. By the cyber security firm CrowdStrike, it crashed Microsoft Windows computer systems around the world last Friday. Thousands of businesses were affected, including airlines and airports. Thousands of flights cancelled. There was mayhem at Westworld. Still, no confirmation on whether British

train services were affected. It's just, it's so hard to tell. So hard to tell. But for me, for me, the main lesson from this is, if you are a cyber security firm, do not give yourself a name that sounds like you are without question a group of teenage hackers. Crowd strike! You're just asking for trouble. Can I call it that? Can I call it the great IT crash of 24? Yeah, why not?

Just so we can have a... Because my mum rang me very, very concerned. She was like, the banks are offline, flights can't go, you know, the Dow Jones is down. I said, the Dow Jones is down. That's just Welshmen. They're a bit depressed anyway. Boom! I punned. And David Weston, the vice president of CrowdStrike said, it's a reminder of how important it is for all of us across the tech ecosystem to prioritize operating with safe deployment and disaster recovery using the mechanisms that exist and These were not reassuring words

There's a vague suggestion that mechanisms that don't exist are an option at times But also I just don't think you should need a reminder on that That's seems like it should be the default setting operating safely and and having a backup plan for anything that shouldn't need a reminder on that. That seems like it should be the default setting operating safely and having a backup plan for anything. That shouldn't need a memo. It was like, you don't write up, do not run head first into an industrial welding machine. Don't eat the sausage if the pig is still alive. You don't need to write that. Remember to take off your zebra outfit when going into the line enclosure and even beyond that remember not to go into the line enclosure. We shouldn't need memos for things like this.

Could you imagine being the person who had done it? They pressed send all. All they could do to that person is fire them. That is it. Because all the lawsuits that will come from Delta and all the airlines, that person should be like, oh, I got to get a job. And because they're in cybersecurity, they will get another job by Thursday. I guess it's worrying for me

because I think the computers are taking over. I'm just sort of wondering, are we heading towards singularity? Is that what is happening here, that the computers are overtaking us in terms of their capabilities, what they're able to do, are they coming for us? And if they are, the big question I guess is then are they good terminator, bad terminator?

Other technology ruining humanity news now and well football fans in Norway have finally taken a stand on behalf of humanity against technology. Specifically, the VAR system in football, Video Assistant Referee System, I think that's what it stands for, which brought anguish and agony to football fans around the world for its, I don't know, technological pedantry, I think is the right term. There was a game between Rosenberg and Lillestrom in Trondheim which fans protested against VAR and let me describe how they protested and let me emphasize also that I'm reading this directly from a news report. They protested with a two-minute bombardment of fish cakes. I mean there's a lot going on in that phrase. A lot of so many questions. Where do you buy fish cakes in bulk? And how do you get them into the stadium?

Oh that's a good question. And when do you know when to start throwing them? It started just after the kickoff, but that question of how they got them into the state, you would have thought, I don't know, you know, I don't know how much stadium security there is at the Rosenberg v Lillestrom match in the Norwegian top division. But you would have thought if a lot of the security personnel saying, there's someone else who's just come in with five bags of fish cakes, they might have thought that maybe there was something, something fishy going on, you might even say. What I do like is that they then also later on, after half time, through smoke bombs,

and I'm going to say this one thing, if I know Scandinavians, if there's going to be fish, it's going to be smoked. Exactly. What I thought was interesting is that they did it for two minutes and then they did it just because it took less time than one of the virtual referee breaks. Yes. They're like we're not even gonna take as much time this doesn't even matter does it? But I will say with the way AI is growing by the end of the season it's gonna take 30 seconds and then by next year there won't be any football because they'll know who won before the game. It won't even matter.

It's just it'll be fun. But it's in the realm of football refereeing has become, you know, technology's got involved and you know, for decades people have been complaining about human referees making mistakes. Now they're complaining about technological referees either making mistakes or taking too long to rectify a mistake. There's no way of winning in football. Football fundamentally exists to give people something to complain about that doesn't fundamentally matter. And let's not forget, sport is supposed to be a metaphor for life and VAR basically lets technology strip all the joy and hope from existence. So what greater metaphor could there possibly be? But this idea that VAR is ruining football, I mean to me, football is ruining football with the sports washing, the self-perpetuating plutocracies, the managers and their defensive

tactics, the laws, the constant whinging, the cheating, the dawning human realisation that maybe there is more to life than sports. Shit, I think my script has been hacked. God, Jesus, die. 17 days of distraction from all reality news now and the Olympic Games is about to start in Paris in just a few days time. The Olympics are returning to Paris for the first time since 1924. There's some new events, break dancing. Various events have been updated.

The modern pentathlon now, I think, is essentially just a Liam Neeson film, in which your participants have to do, I think. It's a car chase. There's something involving swimming across something. There's some shooting. That's what Modern Pentathlon is now. Jackie, are you excited about the Olympics? I am excited about the Olympics. The Paris Olympics, very interesting because it's going to be taking place in the city of Paris, which if you have been to the city of Paris, it's not big enough. There's a lot of cobblestones. We're going to get a lot of ankles that are turning and running.

They're going to play beach volleyball at the base of the Eiffel Tower. If the ball gets stuck, who do we talk to? Mr. Burns, Mr. Potter, who do we talk to? Mr Burns, Mr Potter, who do we talk to? Beats Wally, it's too much. And I will say there's going to be swimming in the Seine, the Seine, how am I pronouncing it? It's not my river. Hashtag not my river. I didn't vote for this river. Never said. They've been cleaning it since May. They've been trying to clean it. And then the mayor jumped in to prove that it was perfectly good But did she drink from it? She did that? There's a couple of things that made me laugh the breakdancing the fact that that is now a sport second Olympics where it's a sport

Weirdly enough. This is the first time I realized they don't get to pick their music Oh as opposed to like gymnastics and ice skating and everybody else gets to pick their music. They're just like, go! And it's like, it would be like if improv were a sport in the Olympics, and somebody just yelled out random countries in Africa, Togo, do the accent. And you're like, no! The last Paris Olympics was still at the time where there were a lot of non-sporting events. I think there was sculpture and, it might even have been poetry competitions and things. It was sport plus culture. And then, I don't know, soon after that it became more only sports.

But, you know, there's other things coming in. There's the javelin is now one, one against one survivor stays on. The speed climbing is using the Eiffel Tower, but which has been specially greased up to make it more difficult. So that should be quite entertaining. Can't we bring back the Medievals like jousting? We've already got javelin, we've already got dressage. That's just the perfect combination of dressage and javelin. Yeah, they were always looking for new events to keep the Olympics modern and relevant to a younger generation. So, you know, to try and replicate the world that we live in there, amongst the new events, speed misogyny and freestyle specimen.

So speed misogyny. It's just someone sat at table with a bell while a woman sits down and they go, Well, I think that's probably a good place to finish. Right, well, that brings us to the end of not only this bugle, but this run of bugles. As I said, we are having a few weeks off, we'll be back for the run up to the November election and also November my stand-up tour Which begins on the 1st of November just in time for me to have to rewrite the whole thing As soon as the American election happens a few days later

All the dates are at my newly revamped website andyzoltzman.co.uk Do come along to every single possible show every single possible show. My sister Helen Zoltzman, who many of you will know from both The Bugle and an infinite number of other wonderful works, including The Illusionist podcast, is doing some live illusionist shows in the UK through August and September. Details at The Illusionist's website, so do go to see that. Do go to support all The Bugle co-hosts at the Edinburgh Festival in August. Tiff, you will be there, will you not? Tiff Hicks I will be there. My show is at lunchtime at the Monkey Barrel,

and it's called Husband Material, and it's because I want to wear my husband like a suit. Luke Sheeran A loose garment! Tiff Hicks That's midday at the Monkey Barrel. I'm there all month and I think I have one preview left Thursday in London. So yeah, or if you want to follow me on any of the social media things or check out House of Games in Autumn, which I've just done, that'll be out. I did say last week I'd have a full list of all the Bugle co-hosts who are doing Edinburgh. I have not achieved that goal. Nish? Nish is there. Tom Ballard? Tom Ballard is there. There will be others, but I can't remember. I'll tweet it. I'm going to embrace social media finally.

But anyway, do go to see all their shows. Jackie, do you have anything to plug? Nothing anywhere near Scotland. Right. But I will say that if you go to jackykation.com or familypetancestry.com which I bought because that's funny, it points to jackykation.com. Familypetancestry.com is just in case you wanted to know if your cat came over on the Mayflower or your familypetancestry.com or your dog is eligible to join the dogs

of the American Revolution, familypetancestry.com. But anyway, JackieGage.com, you can watch the kind of standup I do, all of my specials, a bunch of clips from Conan and all the things. And I have a couple of podcasts, one called the Dork Forest, where I interview people about what they love.

Everybody's welcome to be on a podcast of my level, attainable goal. And then I have a podcast with Laurie Kilmartin about stand-up comedy where we bitch and celebrate. Thank you very much for listening, Bueller's. We will have some sub-episodes for you over the next few weeks. We'll put out something Olympic themed at some point soon, and then we will be back in full swing in I'm gonna say six ish weeks dates to be confirmed anyway see you all then have a phenomenal summer or if you're in the southern hemisphere stuck summer it's still summer it might be cold it's summer seven billion people can't be wrong thank you for listening

goodbye Seven billion people can't be wrong. Thank you for listening. Goodbye.