The Bugle - Starmer's still PM (just)

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

On this week's issue of the Bugle, Andy is joined by Alice Fraser and Josh Gondelman, as the three jump back into the news after a week off, as they discuss the UK's PM Kier Starmer grasping onto power, Trump's recent visit to China, and UK Navy wardrobe conundrum. All this plus more in issue 4379 of The Bugle!🇬🇧 UK PM in trouble: The Bugle catch up on the recent news of Kier Starmer struggling to keep hold of power🇺🇸 Trump and Xi catch up: The trio discuss the talks between US and China🏠 Farage spends big: Andy, Alice and Josh report on the story of Reform Leader Nigel Farage buying a £1.5m house from a £5m Thai crypto-investor's donationAndy's Links: https://www.andyzaltzman.co.uk/Alice Fraser's Links: https://www.patreon.com/AliceFraser?l=en-GBJosh Gondelman's Links: https://www.joshgondelman.com/🎤 Get tickets for the LIVE episode of The Gargle HEREhttps://www.angelcomedy.co.uk/event-detail/the-gargle-live-fri-26th-jun-the-bill-murray-london-tickets-202606261800/🎧 Support The Bugle! Become a Team Bugle subscriber for bonus episodes, exclusive video editions, and the righteous satisfaction of funding satire:http://thebuglepodcast.com📺 Watch Realms Unknown on YouTubeProduced by Chris Skinner, Laura Turner and Harry Gordon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4,379 of the bugle, the world's leading competitive yo-yoing, an industrial fruit canning industry crossover podcast. Also recently voted the podcast most likely to misrepresent what it does as a show in the opening 15 seconds of an episode. I'm Andy Zaltzman here in the Shed of Truth and Distraction in Southland. What's that on the window? Is it a spider? No, it's nothing.

And joining me today from all the currently available major hemispheres of the world From the south and the east, it's Alice Fraser and from the north and the west, Josh Gondelman. Hello to both of you, and thanks for spanning the entire planet for me. You're very welcome, Andy. Hello, buglers.

Thank you, Andy, for having us, and thank you for letting us have you surrounded. How are you, Josh? I'm well, thank you. Yeah, it's been nice weather here. So I've been taking my dog out, who she's a 20-pound pug, and she likes to fight all the other dogs in the neighborhood.

So it keeps me sharp and keeps me off my phone. So I'm grateful to her for that. And are not other official rankings for the local dog fighting? Or is that just something that you keep in your head? I would say my dog is near the bottom of the rankings and talent, but near the top of enthusiasm. I can take you a long way. Yeah.

She's kind of the rudy of dog fighting. Alice, you're just back from Sydney. Yes, I got back from Sydney this morning, which was, I had a lot of fun at the Sydney Comedy Festival doing my Passion for Passion Show. And then I'm about to begin the long-planned Pinser movement of Josh and I coming in to London on the 8th of June and then doing a bunch of shows before Edinburgh, London and the rest of the UK.

So I'm going to move my tactical, I'm going to do my tactical part. of this aggressive incursion, recolonization, I'm calling it, as long as Josh, keep telling me you're right behind me with your angry dog. Don't leave me hang in, bro. I don't think I can take all the Brits on my own.

You and me and Maggie the bug. We're flipping the script. We are recording on the 18th of May, 2026. On this day in the year 332, Emperor Constantine the Great announced free distributions of food

to the people of Constantinople, also known as the birth of woke, setting humanity on a path of dependency on the state that has led us to this horrible stuff. Must stop reading the Daily Telegraph. As always, a section

of the bugle is going straight in the bin. This week, we have a commemorative pull-out section marking David Attenborough's 100th birthday. We were off last week in the week that Atom returned 100. But we've teamed up with Sir David to produce an exclusive audio commemorative pullout

to mark his entry into the, well, the second century of his scheduled millennium of existence. And we have Sir David's own top tens, exclusive for the bugle. Top ten creatures he most enjoys snooping on whilst they're having sex. He's got a weird job. Top ten animals he would like to hunt down, slay with his bare hands and teeth and eat raw if he was an apex predator. And his top 10 outtakes, which include when he said, what's black and white and red all over, that fucking zebra.

Jeez, that was a messy one. Also, when he said, let's be honest, the naked mole rat is the kind of creature that makes you think Darwin was off his fucking chops on the shrooms. And also famously, a bit that I think might have been broadcast on the BBC when he said, personally, I couldn't actually give a shit about dolphins. Massively overrated for me, the evolutionary indecisive fish mammal mashup and failed mermaid. Make a choice, your herring, bothering losers.

The Darwinian love, child of the shark, the jet ski and the Geiger counter. Not quite what the BBC were looking for. And also, perhaps his most famous outtake, chomp, chomp, chomp, ow, ow, yum, yum, yum, another successful morning for Herbert the hyena. So. Oh, I would love to hear David Attenborough's top ten list of animals that when he's observing without interfering on them getting eaten, he feels nothing. I think that's all of them.

That's all of them. I don't know if I can forgive David Anber for not taking the brief window of opportunity that he had to marry Queen Elizabeth. It is what this country so desperately needed. Yeah. Exactly. He learned from the Queen and didn't try to reach his century and a blaze of glory. He just patiently ticked off the years rather than trying to get there in one shot. And we also have an exclusive report on Sir David Atombrose. special 100th birthday commemorative event of the Albert Hall last weekend, which featured

several of Sir David's co-stars from his long career, including hundreds of the animals who've appeared in his shows. Sadly, but predictably it descended into complete chaos, although police in London have now reported that all the major carnivores have now been recaptured, either by the police themselves or by local cabb shops, and that most audience members escaped at worst, only slightly nibbled. And we can confirm after the event, for those who had been worrying that polar bears can indeed get the rappers off penguins, but you don't want to watch them do it. Absolutely gruesome.

And that might be a reference that is specific to people who wait to chocolate bars in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. But the niche reference, we've never shied away from it on this show. I'll tell you what, it's niche, but it's vivid. It really paints a picture. Yep, anyway, the Atombra section in the bin.

Top story this week, Kirstama is, let me just check. Still Prime Minister, as we record, you could never quite tell from day-to-day, hour to hour, or minutes to minute to minute in this country these days. For our British listeners, if you've been having a strange feeling over the last couple of weeks, that our politics has become impatient, infantile, irresponsible and incurable, that you're watching the slow decay of democracy. Well, you might just be onto something. We are just, we are not even two years into this current. Labor government who won a big majority in the 2024 general election, as exclusively reported on the bugle. And Starmor is now clinging on to power as if he's been in for about six terms and has started multiple illegal wars around the world and started kidnapping children and selling

them on for a profit on the sly. It's a very strange time politically. So I turn to you to for an objective outsider's view on exactly how fucking mad. British politics is right now. Alice. I mean, I thought Australian politics was bad for spills of reigning Prime Minister. There are more sort of threatened spills and spills and firings and hirings and resignations and tricks and backstabbing than more spills than a bunch of butterfingers in an earthquake simulator holding champagne flutes. I mean, this is, I feel like the problem, the central problem with politics is that it keeps selecting for people who love politics.

Who's ever said, oh, I love my work. We're so effective because the workplace is so full of politics. But these are either people who love politics or they're wildly disillusioned people who got reluctantly into politics in the hopes that it would be a pathway towards making real effective change in the world, but then came up against the fact that in order to get anything done, you also need to be good at politics, the thing that gets in the way of getting anything done. One Labour official said to Stama,

why are we even doing this? You can't go around saying the PM has to leave and we don't know who will replace him. It's wildly irresponsible. And it's not just wildly irresponsible. It's also increasing evidence for my ongoing hypothesis that democracy cannot survive the internet. Like in the same way as like the traditional model

of aristocracy did not survive the printing press. Like sure there's still aristocrats who sort of, but they're mostly vestigial, performative, humiliating remnants of a failed system beholden to the push and pull of brute capital in the way that governments increasingly seem also to be. But, like, printing press, you're like, oh, aristocrats are people too. You know, people we could pull out of their houses and stick pitchforks in. And then the internet is like all of these institutions full of people.

Have you heard about people? They're awful. It's true. At this point, you're like, Soylent Green. You know, those folks probably had it come in. Well, what do they think? What do they think about pronouns? So that great.

This is, I mean, like, I do look upon this chaos with a little bit of jealousy from my side of the Atlantic Ocean because what I see is a leader who has become unpopular and being potentially on the verge of being replaced through democratic policy that he accedes to. That's the dream over here. Like, wow, your dysfunction is so functional. as I often feel. And, I mean, you had a health minister retire from government. When RFK Jr. has to be removed from office kicking and screaming, it's going to be so hard

to do that because of all the supplements he's taken and all the weird animal bones he has around to, like, cling to for purchase. Well, yes, the health secretary you talk about Wes Street in Quatt as health. Quatt, I think is the correct word, isn't it? last Thursday saying he'd lost confidence in Keir Starmour's leadership. This followed disastrous election results in the local elections in England and national elections in Scotland and Wales. And Stammer has clearly failed to win over a sceptic public

and a septic Labour Party. And he's come out fighting the Prime Minister, come out fighting like a potato in a compost bin. He's vaguely still there, but long term. It doesn't look tremendously good. he warned that any potential leadership contest and where Streeting has says that he will stand for leader of the Labour Party would quote

plunge us into chaos which given the state of the Labour Party is a bit like plunging the Titanic into the North Atlantic now in the year 2026 so it's quite hard to see how it's come to this so quickly something we've sort of discussed in previous issues of the bugle but people clearly tired in this country of the sort of chaos we had with Brexit

and then Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss and Keir Starrma represented a kind of dull, managerial, technocratic and unfortunately he's managed to be dull, managerial and technocratic in a completely chaotic way. So in a way, I guess that's something for everyone. And as I said, it's less than two years since Starma won a mandate from the voting public at the election, albeit with our first past the post voting system, one of those weird, half-assed conditional mandates in which the electorate clearly had its fingers crossed behind its back. He got about 20% of the overall vote, 33% of the actual votes with a low turnout and still got a massive majority, which is essentially the public saying, we're really not sure about this, like using a dating app at your own wedding.

It's not sending the right signals, I think. Oh, speaking of dating apps, half-assed mandate was the original posted title of The Grindr. I feel like some people promise a full ass on that app. I love the streeting has pushed for Britain to rejoin Europe, which I think, like, obviously, was not for Brexit. But that's like, what an alarming thing for someone to leave the government and be like, actually, we need a whole bigger government figuring out our government. That's like being like, I bought a new car and then I got a tow truck to put it on. And we only drive around on the tow truck. Well, in terms of rejoining Europe, it's next month we'll be 10 years since Brexit,

which happened during the bugle hiatus between the John Oliver era and the, well, what everyone clearly thinks of as the Alice Fraser, Josh Gondrellman, plus others era. and is Britain, I don't think this nation is thirsting to rejoin Europe now, 10 years on from the vote, and I think it's what five or six years since Brexit actually came into effect. But I do think a significant majority of this country is thirsting to go back in time to before Brexit, which is different to wanting to rejoin Europe and possibly equally achievable, to be honest. I mean, clearly, you know, Brexit has not been an unqualified success as yet, I think even the most ardent Brexit fans would acknowledge that.

And I think what we have to do, we have to give it time. It's probably too early to reopen those still open wounds still further. What we need to do is let Brexit take its course. And if it's going really, really well after 40 years, then we abandon it and rejoin the EU. That's basically the principle by which Brexit happened itself in the first place. So Westreating a letter of resignation in which he said, where we need vision, we have a vacuum,

and where we need direction, we have drift, which is probably a fair criticism of Kirste Tarma. But in terms of what you want in politics, vision and direction, not necessarily what you want. As Josh, you were hinting at in America, Donald Trump has vision and direction. The problems are the hallucinations that he's seeing

and the fact that where he's going is as fast as possible simultaneously off a cliff and into an iceberg. So vision and direction, not necessarily good things politically. Wait, hearing you put it that way has given me some hope because I have watched the Fast and the Furious franchise since its inception.

And I would have said after the Fast and the Furious Three, what they really needed was direction, but what they got was drift. And actually, that was quite a fun movie, even though it didn't have any later minutes. Yeah. Direction and drift also two absolute keys for successful spin bowling in Test cricket.

That's a different show. So the question now for, Labor is, you know, whether it does seem that a leadership challenge will happen at some point. It might be a few months away because they have to wait for Andy Burnham, former cabinet minister, current mayor of Manchester to get back into Parliament because he's not currently an MP, although an MP in Manchester has said he will step down and allow Burnham to stand, but even then they might not win that by-election because they won the election in 2024 with not a particularly big majority. So basically, it's chaos. But Labor is faced with

this unappetising choice, I guess as the old proverb go. don't shoot the horse midstream, but as the other old proverb goes, don't continue to ride a drowning horse midstream. Either way, they're getting wet. Basically out of the frying pan into an almost identical frying pan, whatever they choose to do.

One feature that we always get whenever we have sort of political upheavals like we're going through at the moment is journalists standing in Downing Street, shouting questions at politicians as they walk into and out of ten Downing Street and obviously the politicians never answer those questions, but those questions still get shouted. Are you going to resign? Who's going to be leader? All that kind of stuff.

And I think it might be time for the journalist to just try different approach and just start shouting quiz questions instead. Minister, what was the name of the Argentinian footballer who was sent off in the 1966 World Cup quarterfinal against England at Wembley? Or just wild conspiracy theories? Minister, is it true that King Charles is plotting with the army to bring down Parliament and reintroduce a proper fucking monarchy, or just questions such as minister, what is love? And they might get more of a reaction.

The questions that we're asking, our leadership over here is, which one of these pictures is an elephant, Mr. President? And he's doing great, he says. He says he always knows which one is the elephant, and there's no problem with him taking that test several times. Another thing Starma

struggles with is how hard it is to turn around perceptions in modern politics particularly with a very hostile media Even the left wing media didn't like him Because he was not left enough And he's quite a hard politician to warm to And the right wing media doesn't like him because he's labour And fundamentally, Keir Starmor could save a drowning puppy from a river And give it back to its distraughts,

eight-year-old owner, and most of the British media would report it as Kier Stama tries to feed Weeping Child to Carnivore. It's hard for him. It's hard. It's tough. I mean, the whole business of politics is tough as some of the newly elected reform councillors are discovering. Well, yeah, so reform did pretty well in the local elections, but they do seem to have plateaued

somewhat, no sign that they can get beyond the 25 to 30 percent. of voting voters who support the things that reform support that are massively unpopular. So it's hard to see how reform can become more popular. But yes, so a reform councillor has quit because it turns out that being a counsellor is, quote, dull and boring, Alice. I mean, is this just a rare blast of actual honesty from a politician? Well, yeah, I mean, sort of couched in lies. I don't know.

I feel like this is the absolute sort of pinnacle of the downside of the millennial obsession with authenticity that has just come back to bite us all in the ass because this guy said, do I really want to do this? The pay is so poor for all you do. Endless boring meetings. You know, basically just throwing up his hands at the whole concept of what it is to be involved in local government. And it really makes you wonder what he thought he was getting into.

What did he expect local government to be? I mean, it is. These are the people who run the bins and clean up the dead possum on Main Street. Like, this is the, that is the job. And then old ladies call you and ask you where Kevin is and you don't know who Kevin is, but you have to pretend you know who Kevin is because a vote's a vote. And she sounds like she might last another three years. Like, this is the nightmare of local politics.

And we can't move for dead possums on the roads over here, Alice. he is the only person remaining who hears parliament and still thinks he's going to be hanging out with George Clinton. That was what he thought he was being elected to. It is, but that's what the job is. It's dull and it's boring. And we want dull, boring, competent people to do it. And reform, like this guy has this arch conservative attitude, right, where they don't want to govern.

They don't want to make a government that works for people. these people that far right just want to be racist and on TV. And it's only a shame that he retired too late to get booked for the Netflix roast of Kevin Hart. I mean, who would have thought that the everyday drudgery of trying to actually help people in the area you represent and trying to find some actual money to pay for some actual stuff to be done was less fun than barking on about immigrants who are in the country and twerking an imaginary statue of King Arthur. No one could possibly have foreseen that. His leader, Nigel Farage, is facing a parliamentary investigation after receiving a five million pound donation from a Thai-based crypto billionaire,

with which he instantly bought a one-and-a-half-million-pound house for, and is now facing a parliamentary investigation for not declaring the gift, which happened before he was an MP. But I guess, you know, he who has never received a five million pound donation with no strings attached from a dubious offshore crypto billionaire and then bought a house with the money cast the first stone. You know, we've all been in very similar positions. You know, I hate to look at everything through these red, white and blue stars and stripes glasses that I have on. but Hey, hey, all our flags are red, white and blue, Josh. That's, I'm sorry.

That's why I specified stars and stripes. We got stars too, motherfucker. That's fair. But we got way more stripes. True, true, true. I'm getting really competitive about this. You know what? Then maybe we all feel the same way.

From where I'm sitting, I look at someone receive a $5 million bribe and only spend $1.5 million on a new house. And I think, what restraint? It is like such a, it is so obvious, right? And after years, I think this is really a clarifying new story. Because after years of arguing whether the blockchain would ever be a viable, useful technology, and whether cryptocurrency serves a purpose other than as like a speculative

asset, it's nice to have settled into like kind of an international consensus. they yeah the answer is yes cryptocurrency in the blockchain exists to make bribery simple and intuitive it is done for corruption what generative AI has done for the worst and most

factually incorrect pros in human history it just made it possible at the stroke of a key I don't I also I'll say this I don't think Farage should live in that fancy new house and to put it in terms the Reform Party will understand

I think he should go back where he came from. So if Stama is turfed out of office at some point later this year, it will continue this insane prime ministerial churn, to put it in context, Prince George, the son of Prince William, who's the son of the current king, who was the son of the previous queen, Prince George, born in 2013, Kier Starrma would be his seventh prime minister. and he's not even 13 years old yet. So, I mean, it's possible that he might receive his seventh prime minister

on the day of his bar mitzvah. Sorry, that's not public domain. Whereas Prince William has, well, he had five prime ministers by the time he was 34. By the time he was 13, he'd only had two. But now here is the key point of difference. So in his first 13 years, William had two prime ministers, George, set for seven. But William had had nine different England men's test cricket captains and George only four.

So we've had a lot more stability in the really important public positions. But prime ministers have been complete chaos. I think the real problem with democracy is elections, Andy. The winning in the election is sort of the process of winning an election in the modern, sort of bribery and corruption ecosystem almost renders you entirely of unfit for office by the time you acquire it. So I reckon, I don't know,

we need to figure out a new system, maybe some sort of just bloodline situation. Right. Yeah. Been in the pie, random allocation lottery, Thunderdome. I've got a whole list of options.

Well, they all sound preferable, to be honest, to what we have at the moment. And of course, we have the option there, as I mentioned earlier, King Charles. Yeah, we have a monarchy ready to go that's been sitting there since, well, pretty much the late 1640s thinking, look,

you made a mistake. It's time to give us full uncontrolled executive power again. And he did the king's speech last week. So when they have the state opening of Parliament, one of the bizarre remnants of medieval cosplay that we still have in this country is the king is trooped into parliament,

sits in the House of Lords, and reads out the government's slate of policies. It's basically constitutional karaoke. Someone else's words, not the best delivery, and probably best listen to when not completely sober. So here we had, the Royal Mumble, as is also known, and the unveiled a raft of government plans, might not be the most durable of rafts in the current stormy political seas,

and also unveiled a new facial expression, King Charles, which was constitutional exaspero baffledom. And I think he found it particularly hard this time. King Chuck, because he's just come back from that trip in America that we talked about recently where he was cracking gags. He was cracking his historical gags

about the burning down the White House, about the Boston Tea Party, and now he's back home and he just has to read out a list of stuff that no one thinks is actually going to happen in the dullest possible tone of voice. And you could see that in his eyes, that sense, I used to be someone.

We miss him. It's fun It's fun to have royalty that's not in charge of anything That's what was so wonderful about Prince He just made good music Just quickly amongst the headline policies In the King's speech

Were the Well would be headline policies If policies were ever headlines now But And by now I mean at any point in the last 10 years The European Partnership bill, also known as the maybe next time start sewing your parachute

before you jump out of the airplane bill. The immigration and asylum bill, also known as the unworkable local solutions to unsolvable global problems bill. The digital ID, they're bringing in plans to introduce compulsory digital

ID, which will have access to the inner recesses of all of our British souls and send us real-time percentage Britishness readings to our mobile phone so we can keep up on exactly how British we are at all times and they've also reached a compromise under which digital ID will be compulsory but only for people planning to commit benefit fraud or other crimes

education for all bill that sounds like a fucking bad idea frankly we need education for none education only upsets people and the NHS modernisation bill which will streamline medical data with the introduction of a single patient record who the single patient will be is to be decided by a TV reality show with the illest people in the country pitching to a panel of celebrity medical judges. We'll have full updates on how all those bills do on their process through whatever's left of Parliament

over the next 10 years on the bugle. Donald Trump meets someone he's obviously scared of news now and Josh, exciting times in America. Donald Trump has been to China for a meeting with President Cricket team of, sorry, President 11, sorry President Xi, got there eventually. It was a tough one I found watching Trump and G.

It made me think if I was a fly on a wall at that meeting, whose sandwich would I vomit on first? It was a tough call. How did Trump's visit go down in America? There was an element of awkwardness about it, I thought. Yeah. It didn't seem especially effective either. They're at like these meetings, much like Trump's hair, a lot of pomp without much going on underneath.

The talks didn't bring the Iran war any closer to ending unless you're counting the sense, the sense that every passing moment brings us slightly closer to the inevitable heat death of the universe. Trump brought Elon Musk and Pete Hegsteth to China with him to meet President Xi, which is like a Mount Rushmore of people who think they should be on Mount Rushmore. People talk about a nightmare blunt rotation. This goes beyond nightmare and is a full sleep paralysis conclave. The Chinese military band played YMCA, which is one of Trump's favorite songs. Although if you didn't know that fact about the song, you would assume China had amassed a powerful gay army that it was threatening the United States with. The kind of instance, ancient Greece. And Trump, who doesn't drink, was allegedly spotted sipping champagne with President

Xi Jinping. And as the old saying goes, what happens in China becomes whatever the Chinese word for compromise is. Trump said he describes Xi as a friend, which is like, you know, it's controversially he calls Xi a friend. And it's like, I don't even believe that. because there's like no pictures of Trump, Xi, and Jeffrey Epstein altogether. That's how you know someone is a friend of Donald Trump.

And in a departure, this was like a little bit alarming. In a departure from U.S. diplomatic tradition, Trump didn't bring up China's human rights violations. You know, not even to say like, good job with the human rights violations. Or do you have any tips on how I could commit more human rights violations, which I think must have hurt President Xi when that didn't happen? Well, yeah. You think that's, you know, if you're like a journalist, you're interviewing Roger Federer, getting through a whole interview without mentioning his tennis career.

It's quite a bit outside, isn't it? It's like, hey, I've been working really hard on this stuff. Well, it is so bizarre because this whole interaction was marked by sort of two-facedness on both sides, because on the one hand, you have the Chinese people being allowed on their extremely censored to social media sites to openly mock Donald Trump even while this diplomatic event was taking place. And then at the same time, Donald Trump is shaking hands with President Xi and not mentioning the human rights violations

and also calling him in a friend, while the entirety of the American economy is currently precariously balanced on top of the AI boosterism, hype train, accelerationist doom mechanism, which is entirely the argument of that is just, oh, if we don't do it, China will and they'll eat us. So it feels extremely like, I don't know how to say. Like, what's the point of this conversation?

Well, Xi said to Trump, we should be partners, which might not be language Trump is overly familiar with. The art of the partnership, not amongst his many book titles. Partnership for Trump, I mean, partnership generally involves elements of give and take. Or as Trump's career suggests that for him, give and take means you give, he takes. So it's hard to know, you know, obviously two big, big characters. Again, update you on for those of you who've not heard of them.

Donald Trump is the punchline in the classic joke. What do you get when you cross the excesses of unaccountable, basically unregulated free reign capitalism with a crumblingly outdated democracy and a self-interested irresponsible media? And Xi Jinping is the freedom of expression skeptic, professional accusations of genocide ignore, who's bravely overcome a long-standing human rights intolerance to become the undisputed Taylor Swift of the Chinese Communist Party.

So, you know, big characters meeting. And China has spent much of this millennium giggling quietly to itself about how fucking easy it's proving to continue its steady plod towards being the world's number one superpower. I don't know what they chatted about. I mean, how's your wall? Obviously, it would have been a bit of a conversation starter. What is the Greenland of Taiwan exchange rate right now?

Who were you picturing asking? How's your wall? I could go either way, couldn't it? Yeah. Could go either way. And obviously sharing tips on hair care and stifling media opposition. But a Taiwan issue was something that was rather skirted around. President Xi told Trump that disagreement over Taiwan could be.

And I quote, like telling your auntie and your uncle to toddle off and fetch the commemorative brass porcupine that you've just whacked off the top of a mountain with a golf club. I might have over translated there. I think more simply, it could send relations down a dangerous path. And the American position on Taiwan has been described as strategic ambiguity. Essentially, America is a little bit sort of hamstrung at the moment in terms of what possible sort of threats or leverage it can use against China, given that they are in a current state, America, of struggling to impose martial will on opponents with a barely functioning military. So getting on the wrong side of the world's biggest military power. seems like something worth avoiding, especially now China no longer make all their soldiers out of terracotta,

which makes them so much more flexible. The world being overwhelmed by technological-based panic news now. Alice, you always keep us up to date on the latest progress of technology and rightly disposing humans to the dustbin of history where we so conclusively belong. And, well, a couple of stories this week, including Atlanta, the USA being, well, overwhelmed by several driverless cars, let's talk it up, doesn't, 100, thousands of driverless cars rampaging around a terrified neighborhood as the future came to America last week.

Yeah, it was more than a handful of driverless cars. I mean, that's not a very particularly useful metric given that a car is more than a handful in itself, but nearly 50 driverless cars descended on, apparently no reason on an Atlanta a neighborhood and just sort of drove around menacingly in the background. I mean, at that point, you're sort of hoping that there's an ex-boyfriend there who's done someone wrong who happens to be very good at hacking because otherwise it's just the idea that these driverless cars might have decided of their own accord to do it or become possessed by the ghost of some taxi driver on their way to pick someone up who unfortunately

died with that ride unfinished. I, it is unsettling when these kind of confluences of technological incompetence sort of make themselves very publicly known. People were unsettled and upset by it and I think it has led to an increase in the vandalization of Waymo cars. This is the most ludicrous story to come out of Atlanta since the rapper ludicrous came out of Atlanta. And similar to that instance, people are yelling,

Move, get out the way. I did the radio edit family show. A fleet of Waymo driverless cars drove to a cul-de-sac in suburban Georgia and then just went in circles for hours. The cars were white, which may have dissuaded residents from calling the cops or straight up opening fire on them, which is not a joke about the South being racist. It's a joke about people who live in cul-de-sacs being racist. I didn't like this. If I'm going in circles in a car for hours, I want it to be for the classic reasons. I won't admit that I'm lost.

And I think the upshot of this whole story is that I'm less convinced that technology will usher in the apocalypse. But I'm more convinced it will cause a traffic jam, making it way harder to flee if and when the apocalypse occurs. Is it only cul-de-sac is a French term for vasectomy, I believe? In another, well, tech panic, Alice, well, Anthropic have sparked more mayhem around the world. Well, in the world of essentially gambling on technology in a way that really we should have grown out of by now. Yes, they have made a lot of people in the investing in AI and secondary markets,

market panic by suggesting that they are not, they are not going to honor any investments that have been made in these secondary markets. There's been widespread panic, sell-offs, people are terrified that they're hypothetically valuable. So basically just as a primer for anyone who's not super into economics, all stocks and shares are hypothetical valuations. They're sort of abstractions on the nature of real business.

And then AI on top of that is an abstraction on that. the nature of real business. And then on top of that, these secondary markets are abstractions on the concept of value itself. And the problem, the problem with the wild overvaluation AI hype train is that everyone knows it's a hype train. And they all know that they're playing poker with a potentially disastrous hand. But the game is that they have to sell at the exact right moment because all these other suckers don't know that it's a bad hand, except they all have the same hand. And it has an unquantifiable chance of turning out to destroy the world. world and an unquantifiable chance of turning out as well as they're all saying very loudly that it

will. But it's now past the point where in order to justify the investments that have been made in the technology, it would have to be significantly more impactful and economically valuable technology with more uptake than email. So, you know, anything that nudges the elbow of the players at that particular table, I think is likely to lead to extreme panic of flipping of the table and everyone pulling out their shotguns, because it feels like everyone in that area is getting increasingly wild-eyed, both as the technology progresses and improves, and as it still continues to fail to deliver the crushing blow to all of human economic activity that it seems to be designed to deliver.

So are you essentially saying that basing the entire global economy on essentially pretend money and even more pretend stuff is not necessarily long. going to work for us. Well, see, the thing is there is this incredible technology that is available, and yes, it's very expensive and costly to the environment, but there's incredible use cases in medicine and other areas of, you know, not doing your own spreadsheets. But the problem is that on top of that, they're sort of selling it as though it's about to become God.

There's not a lot of technology that can live up to that. And also it is promising to do a lot of the things about being human that we quite like doing. As David Perel said, it's offering to write for me. I might as well have someone. I might as well pay someone to have sex for me. It is, there's just so much terrifying about this story from an economic standpoint. But there's some that's kind of like satisfying. Like watching an AI company complain that their kind of abstract intellectualized

property has been acquired without going through proper channels. It's like, oh, huh, is that hurtful? Does that endanger your business model? Interesting that you should feel that way. And Anthropic has warned, so they warned all these people that bought shares on secondary markets that those shares in their company might be worthless. And I thought that was an admission that their business model appears to be an environmentally catastrophic Ponzi scheme where three companies cook each other's books like some kind of deranged top chef challenge. But apparently these people aren't allowed to do that.

Well, if you want more science and tech updates, do catch Alice's Bugle's sister podcast, The Gargle. And on the 26th of June, there is a live gargle at the Bill Murray in London. Tickets available now, or link in the show notes. I've been reliably informed. It's high tech stuff. Moving on now to Nipples News and well the UK has been rocked by this story. The Royal Navy is set to be forced to redesign jackets worn by female officers

because the buttons on the jackets look too much like nipples and we in Britain simply cannot cope with seeing someone wearing an item of clothing with some things above where their nipples would be. It's important to emphasize that these jackets have been worn for a long time and no one has really noticed this issue before. But now the Royal Navy is set to spend 200,000, let's talk it up, 200 million pounds of public money redesigning these uniforms because, as I said, the buttons look like nipples,

if your nipples are made of brass and you've got eight of them. So for any metal wolves thinking of joining the Navy, this is a huge issue that he's addressing right now, Alice. I mean, Andy, as they say, every one thing, that you point at someone else, three fingers are pointing back at you. This feels like somebody telling on themselves that they in person, that we know a lot, we know a lot about somebody's nipples right now. We know that one person in a position of power with influence over the British Navy,

Navy has big, bubbly brass nipples. It's so funny that the ornamental buttons, this is my favorite part, that it's only on uniforms for women. That's so funny because it's also like, men also have nipples. We've had them since DeAngelo made the untitled How Does It Feel Music Video? And we all just kind of sprouted them to be in alignment.

Rest in peace to DeAngel. Not to be out done though. Pete Higgseth proposed new formal military dress for women in the American military, which is just a T-shirt that says milk, milk, lemonade, round the corner, Fudge is made. So it could be worse. I mean, I do feel like there is gender at play here

because no one's ever suggesting that any of men's buttons are purely ornamental. And men have a history of suggesting that at least one of women's buttons is purely ornamental, and they can't find it anyway. Family. The problem is the top two buttons on this jacket, the formal number one jacket, it's called, are in the same sort of upper mid-frontal torso region as nipples are so often found on the human body. and ever since God told Eve to cover herself up with a fig leaf bikini the female nipple has been one of the most controversial body parts

in the entire history of the human chest. So this kind of button-based smut just won't wash in Britain these days. And the jacket in question, which is apparently too damn suggestive in these days when nipples can never be seen anywhere, least of all on the internet, is made of dark blue wool and is double-breasted. Can we even fucking say that now? I'm sorry if I just made anyone uncontrollably. horny. Other parts of our military uniforms

that may also have to be revamped or devamped for this apparently prudish age include, well, some very, very questionally shaped hats that are knocking around the British military that are certainly over with you a bit of a what's the term de-falisimilitudeification, I believe. And when they notice

all the tassels on those military medals, there's going to be, there's some serious redesign needed there. Whilst other bits of the armed forces get-ups could also be redesigned because and I quote, they look absolutely fucking ridiculous. So there we are. I mean, this is what we are as a nation now.

And finally on this week's bugle, Iran War Knock-on Effects Update News now. While the Iran War has continued to rumble on like the indigestably undercooked political chicken sheesh that it is. What's actually going on right now? It's barely even worth bothering to try to keep up, partly because no one believes anything that anyone says about it anymore, least of all Trump. not sure he even believes himself anymore. He might as well say Iran has promised only to build nukes if they don't explode, and we've agreed that Pogo sticks and pedaloes are now the only legal forms of transport across the entire Middle East, now pull my finger and call me Donzel Washington,

and the world would shrug and get on with its busy schedule of despairing at what we have become. But the side effects of the war are continuing to radiate outwards, kind of inverse chaos theory. A war breaks out in Iran, and somewhere in the Amazon rainforest, a butterfly flaps its wings to try to change the channel on the TV. it's had enough of news and wants to watch some tennis. We've already seen airlines cancel flights, various other impacts, and now a Japanese snack food company has had to switch to a black and white color scheme

or lack of color scheme on some of its products as supply chain issues have left it without enough ink to make its packets colorful enough to prompt children properly to pester their parents in supermarkets. So this is huge in terms of pest a power and the impact that could have of the global economy. it's a very concerning time for everyone. Yes, Andy, it's the worst form of time travel

going back to war shortages and everything being in black and white. We'll bring the mystery back to televised snooker. I was going to say it's going to bring the mystery back to snacks because who reads the packets of snacks? You just are drawn to it by some sort of primordial affection for a particular colour scheme that made a nest in your head at some point in your early childhood and nothing will ever feel like home again except for that combination of colors in plastic.

Ink shortage is tough. I knew that when we went into this illegal and unjust and unnecessary war, gas prices would go up. But I'm a professional writer. I'm not ready for Bick pens to cost $15 a piece. This is going to break me. And you know what, Andy and Alice, I'll say it. Trump's lost me. I'm out. I'm out on Trump. Imagine if that guy existed. Someone who loves racism and also writing longhand. Those are his two priorities and they're now in conflict. Also, return to a black and white world would make news bulletins much perkyer. They tend to be quite serious and quite ominous a lot of the time, but go back to old black and white cafe news bulletins. And there goes the plucky American missile off to find a nice little

school to blow to pieces. Jolly good show, everyone. I think it would just make everything seem a little bit better. Well, that brings us to the end of this week's Bugle. Thank you very much for listening, buglers. Don't forget that this week there is a special opportunity, as indeed there is every week to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme, which is available 365 and a quarter days of the year. That's averaging out over a four-year period.

That will enable you to help keep this show free, flourishing and independent. Go to the Bugle podcast and click the donate button. and as part of your voluntary subscription, you will have access to the universe exclusive almost monthly Ask Andy Show, in which you get to ask me any question that you like and I will choose whether or not to answer it. I mean, if that doesn't sell it, I don't know what will.

Josh, anything to plug? Yeah, I have a newsletter that I read every Monday. It's called That's Marvelous. You can get it, That's Marvelous Newsletter.com. I am one of the co-hosts of the podcast The Nightly, which is for it comes from a hatch, and it is for going to sleep too. So I host the Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and it is entertaining enough that you'll listen and soothing enough that it won't keep you up. And I have a stand-up special called Positive Reinforcement.

You can find on YouTube, on Madison's YouTube page. And my only real road dates coming up are Bristol, Tennessee, at the Blue, Ridge Comedy Club, the 29th and 30th of May. And I'm considering, I'm trying to figure out if I can go to Fringe for a week and pop around to do some spots on shows. So that's like something I'm very excited to attempt more info on that unfolding. It will be in the newsletter. Alice.

I have gigs in the UK coming up from the 8th of June all the way through. Sign up at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. You can subscribe there for free. Get my weekly updates on where I am and what I'm. doing what's coming up because I don't trust the algorithms anymore. If you are in the UK, you can buy my book, A Passion for Passion, a Passion for Passion from the Bugle website, bugle podcast.com. If you're in Australia, you can buy it directly from my website. I'm shipping them out with a little Fabio sketch because I get a bigger margin if you buy it from my website.

That's alicephraiser.com or alicecomedyfraiser.com depending on if you think comedy is my middle name or not. And do you can see all the other bugle co-hosts who will be appearing at the Edinburgh Festival, who include, and this is not an exhaustive list, but we will have exhaustive list over the next few weeks. Tom Ballard is going to be there, and Tiff Stevenson, and others

besides. Next week, we will have Felicity Ward and Anavabal. Until then, goodbye. Hello, I am Andy Zaltzman, as you may know. The Bugle, as well as being the world's only ever, longest running and arguably best audio newspaper for a visual world is one of the very few fully independent media empires remaining in this thus far very silly millennium. Our voluntary subscribing listeners have made this possible and you, if you are not already one, can join them to keep our shows

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