The Bugle - Stop Resisting

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

Tiff Stevenson and Anuvab Pal join Andy Zaltzman for more of your finest bullshit bookended satire.This week, the team report on Germany's tentative shift to the right, Trump wondering why 'dictator' Zelenskyy, Starmer and Macron have done nothing to end Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Liz Truss urges 'Elon's nerd army' to examine Britain's 'deep state' and - in comparatively normal news - Amazon buy James Bond.Meanwhile, Anuvab's yoga teacher imparts some wisdom to apply to all of the above. Listen in for top-tier satire, incisive analysis, and the usual dose of nonsense.💰 Support The Bugle: http://thebuglepodcast.com/donate🎧 Listen to Realms Unknown https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/realms-unknown🎙 Featuring: Andy Zaltzman, Tiff Stevenson and Anuvab Pal🎛 Produced by: Chris Skinner & Ped Hunter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4332 of The Bugle, barking helplessly into the void since 2007. I am Andy Zoltzman, coming to you live and in the past and or future, depending on when you listen to this, from the Granite City, Aberdeen in Scotland, a place that fears not the colour grey. Many people think that Aberdeen acquired its nickname because so many of the buildings here are built of the celebrity rock granite, famed of course for its granite rock-like hardness. But, and those people would be right, but there is another school of thought that also claims that the granite city tag actually derives

from a 14th century advertising campaign trying to encourage people to consult the wisdom of old women to solve their problems rather than bottling everything up and keeping stuff to themselves. The slogan, Don't Can It, Gran It, was hugely successful for several hundred years, hence the name of the city. Sorry, I've got to tell you this. Bugle podcast, Andy speaking. Yes? Sorry, you're saying I need to stop avoiding reality by fleeing to the comforting bosom of bullshit at the first available opportunity. Okay. Well, no, I'm not comfortable with it, but you're saying I need to stop avoiding reality by fleeing to the comforting bosom of bullshit at the first available opportunity. O-o-okay. Well, no, I'm not comfortable with it, but you're the boss.

Yeah, yeah, you should have all the oxen for the monthly sacrifice by Thursday. Sorry, folks. I've got Zeus on the line here. Sorry, Zed. Does it have to be 100? Can I not do 80 this month and 120 next month? I know 5 of January's auction were technically goats, but I'll make it up to you. I'm good for it.

You sound cross. Things still a bit tricky at home for you. Well, I don't blame her, TBH. Can I get on with the show? Cheers. Sorry. Back to the show. Welcome to The Bugle. I am Andy Zaltzman, coming to you, as I said,

from Aberdeen and joining me I'm delighted to say from further south to differing degrees. Firstly from London it's Tiff Stevenson. Hello Tiff. Yes Yeah, it was genuinely sunny and I did have quite a lot of clothes on when I lugged a massive suitcase to the hotel. So I mean, whether it's warm or not, I think by Aberdonian standards, it is absolutely toasty. Perhaps further evidence that, I mean, Trump, I think Trump has a golf

course not far from here so it is possible it's just the fires of hell just heating the whole place up. Also joining us from Mumbai where I'm gonna take a punt it might be slightly hotter than it is in Aberdeen, it's Anubhav Pal. Hello Andy, hi Tiff Pleasure to be here. It's warmer and the AQI, I think, is in the thousands, which is about the same as Mars. So it's, look, Andy, Tiff, I have a suggestion. Normally, we usually start this podcast with introductions and where we are. We've done it for years, but now this is the end of the rules-based order in the world and there aren't any laws anymore. I was wondering if we could start the podcast with a karaoke. Well, I mean nothing is off the table in this day and age. I've never actually done karaoke

and I consider that one of my greatest personal triumphs, that I've reached the age of 50 without ever having to resort to karaoke. I'm just not sure. I just don't think... I mean, what was that saying the art the arc of civilization bends towards karaoke I'm not sure that's a good thing yeah to be honest anyway we are recording on the 24th of February if you get the extended version of this there will be full karaoke renditions of every single song ever recorded. On the 25th of February 1991, so 34 years ago now, the Warsaw Pact was disbanded at a meeting in Budapest. Surely presaging an age in which the old divisions of left and right, the unnecessary power frittering away of billions of dollars on military expenditure to cover the political

failures of humanity, and the sense that Europe was constantly on the brink of war would surely pass into the annals of history. Let me just check how that's going. Ah, could do better. I guess looking back to 1991 and the end of the Warsaw Pact, people would have hoped that the USA and Russia would start getting on better politically. So I guess at least that bit is going OK, just not quite in the way that people had maybe hoped

and envisaged, naive as we were back in the early 1990s. On the 26th of February, 1616, Galileo Galilei, double G as he was known, was formally banned by the Roman Catholic Church from teaching his view that the Earth orbits the Sun. Galileo, obviously the founder of wokeness with his rather negative, we are just hapless bulls in a celestial snooker match passive surrenderism

that has left this planet in the state it's currently in. When we were the center of the universe and the sun revolved around us, not the other way around, we got shit done. For example, the Roman Empire, that was when the sun revol revolves around the earth versus the woke lobby forcing everyone on a diversity awareness cake baking McCromney retreat before they're even allowed to hire a vegan gluten-free car that isn't allowed

to go anywhere in case it wakes up a sleeping pheasant oh no oh no but it's it's it's happening it's um I'm the next one to go to the dark side. Oh dear. Oh, I just hoped it wouldn't happen in Aberdeen. As always, a section of The Bugle is going straight in the bin. This week, influencers, we have a special influencer section. The great influencer epidemic still shows no signs of abating.

So we at The Bugle, where of course we take our role as influencers of every generation, past, present and future, very, very, very seriously indeed. We tell you which of the latest influence who have hit the big time in the last 48 hours you should welcome into your life. And some of the big stars have really broken through in the last couple of days. Karakala von Glopperheit, who is 315th in line to the defunct Prussian throne. CVG is Europe's leading cushion awareness influencer

with tips on everything from how many cushions to use in a standard sized armchair, to the optimum cushion design for someone who hates cushions, to how many cushions is the absolute maximum to give to someone as a Christmas or birthday present without it becoming one or more of inconvenient, weird or strangely aggressive. Also, we look at the work of Wauser McWow,

the world's leading influencer influencer who produces four YouTube videos every quarter hour advising you what influencers you should try to be influenced by today. He already has 1.3 billion followers, having just started yesterday. Sploshie, the latest influencer genius behind the wildly successful Sploshie Steps in Puddles Nano video series in which the eponymous Sploshy Visible from the Carve Downwards steps in puddles. He has 2.7 billion followers on the Instagram rival Transients where you can post videos up to two seconds long that disappear after three more seconds. And finally, on our roundup of the latest influencers, Brad

and Roses, the Instagrate trendsetting triple-axe supergroup formed of unqualified A-Historian Brad Strammel, former health-work influencer Rose Jumpreta and the 98-year-old gramfluencer Rose Hobbinsworth. Brad and Roses suggest ways that governments might distract their people from deep-seated problems with big-ticket ephemeral distractions and tell you how to make sure you can take a photo of yourself thinking about attending one of those hypothetical events. So those are the influences that we would be telling you to follow, have that section not been put straight in the bin. Andy, there is an influencer in New Delhi who goes around abusing other influencers.

She has a million views. So I think you're onto something here. That's the logical endpoint of all civilization. I think if, I mean, I will, I have done the maths on this in the past. And if the rate of influencer inflation continues, then by the year, I think it's 2049, there will be more influencers than regular civilians in the world then the market will collapse and all the influencers will be congealed into one giant super influencer called God and the whole process will start again from scratch so do keep an eye on that over the next 24 years yep

Yeah, I mean, that's, I'm pretty sure that's the acronym. The B of Bugle is definitely, definitely, definitely that. I can't remember what the UG, L and E are anyway. I would sign up to any rival of Twitter called the Zolta. I think I can speak to some venture capital financing. I'm up for it. I'm absolutely up for it. Top story this week. Germany has voted and it has got things very right. The most right it has been since the war.

So I've translated that from a German news website and I don't speak German so I might not be a hundred percent accurate but we'll have to go with that. It's a yes I mean slightly weird times that we're living in democratically in which the far-right AFD party in Germany got 21% of the vote. This is a party many of whose senior figures have not been quite as definitely not Nazis as would be ideal for anyone who's ever heard of or Read anything about the 20th century I guess on the plus side 21%

We've probably still got a few happy years until they fully take over Germany. So let's cling to that Tiff you are our German electoral politics correspondent. Congratulations on being appointed to that prestigious... Right. Okay. And I was slightly tainted a combination historically, I guess. And about what have you made of Germany's rightward drift in recent recently. So the biggest party in the election was the center-right CDU-CSU coalition led by Friedrich Merz with 29% they've said they will not go

into coalition with the AFD so I guess that's another plus to cling to. 79% of German voters who voted did not vote for the far-right anti-learning, even a hint of a lesson from history, AFD party. And its impressively hypocritical leader, Alice Weidel. I'm sorry for massaging up pronunciations here. But what have you made of it, watching on from a safer distance? You know, I think it's an interesting world to be in where the BBC World podcast in the morning, I was listening to said, it could have been the fascists. It was nearly the fascists, but eventually it wasn't. That can't be a way in which we begin our day. The way for humanity to progress in 2025 should be more than it's not Hitler. After all this time, I think we should be able to say a few more things that it's not

Hitler. It could be anything. It's a cyclist. It's a pickleball player. But it's not Hitler. It should not be the gauging never really understood it in the first place. I've long since given up trying to understand left and right. I never really understood it in the first place. It never made any sort of logical sense to me, left and right.

Now I think, I don't know, all the old certainties have just evaporated away in a spray of muskian piss, frankly. The weird thing is that when you categorize any group of people, after a while, the English language stops mattering. Like for example, recently when Elon Musk was talking to the AFT, one of the things that came up was that, you know, we're against immigrants and people who look like immigrants. And I thought to myself, that could just be a tourist the incumbent Chancellor Olaf Scholz bagged just 16% of the vote for the

Social Democrats their sausage sorry read that wrong their worst since the Yeah. Yeah. You're more disciplined than I am. There will be weeks and months of negotiations before a coalition is officially formed. Obviously in Britain we had a couple of elections after which we dabbled in negotiations for coalitions and it did not suit us well at all. Not our game discussing compromise and cooperation. That's not what politics is supposed to be about.

But obviously they're slightly more used to it in Germany. So it still remains to be seen exactly how this will, how all the pieces will fall into place. But yeah, I guess as a fan of humanity, not drifting to the right politically, slightly worrying times across Europe. I think being part of coalitions can have a significant impact on your mental health. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't one of the leaders of the coalition in Great

Britain a gentleman called Nick Clegg who then went on to work for Facebook? Yes, yes, yes, I mean that was a strange transformation and we will talk a little more about the tech takeover of the human soul later in the show. But yes, he went from leader of a party that was basically explicitly designed never to have to be in power accidentally ended up in power and Yes had us rather curious tech based career ever since what just shows the danger of of having to having to Having to compromise on things. It does not suit our national psyche having to compromise on things it does not suit our national psyche. Ukraine update now and since we last podcasted to you Donald Trump has used very trendy insults towards Vladimir Zelensky. He called him a dictator.

Now people get very cross, some people get very cross when you pass Trump off as a dictator simply because he acts, pass Trump off as a dictator simply because he acts, talks and rules like a dictator. We've got to remember he's a democratically elected leader with a mandate from the people of the USA to behave like a dictator to the rest of the world. That is a very important difference to make. It's also not entirely clear when Trump calls a Lensky dictator if it was meant as a criticism or a glowing compliment. The political equivalent of the snooker player tapping

a cue on the cushion after their opponent has left them in a tricky spot on the bulk cushion behind the green so um also I've been looking at the way the world is going the way Trump is governing if that's the right word America this is not so much the pot calling the kettle black as the lawnmower calling the terrapin a lawnmower. It was kind of strange. Well, I mean, it would be in previous times you would have thought this a strange thing that the American president siding, as we discussed last week, with America's implacable enemy over its allies.

But this is 2025. That means you can hear the honking in the background here in Aberdeen. People are not happy about it. Trump also turned his fire on Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, saying they have not done anything to end the Ukraine war. And again, we've discussed in recent weeks that not doing anything and then doing something doesn't mean that something is necessarily the right thing to do. But anyway, Anifer, what have you made of this? Well, I'm just trying to figure out what not doing anything means. I think in Trump's book, does not doing anything mean he hasn't threatened to bomb Ukraine along with Russia till they reach a settlement.

Well, I mean, he doesn't have cards in peace negotiations because Trump has just taken all the cards out of his hand and given them to his opponent. So I mean yes I guess there's an element of truth in that he doesn't have have cards to play. Trump also said Russia wants to stop the savage barbarianism and look I don't have any of you listening bugglers or Anivab or Tiff have you got any suggestions for how Russia might stop the savage barbarianism that it is perpetrating? Itself, I don't know what how it might do that. I mean there are I guess I mean one one way would be To just stop it rather than just wanting to stop it would be to actually stop it. But um, everything that's quite a big step politically. The defining line between those is more blurred than ever. The way I look at the way geopolitics has been played right now is very similar to what my yoga teacher told me this Sunday. I've started going to yoga.

I'm sorry to report this. My wife's been taking me to yoga. And I think what Donald Trump is saying to Zelensky is exactly what my yoga teacher said to me in my first class, because I wasn't doing the stretch in the downward dog correctly and he said stop resisting. Donald Trump's saying the same thing to countries that are being invaded, stop resisting, I mean, even by Trump standards, impressively inaccurate. I guess, you know, but then again, he's a man who has complained about how Abraham Lincoln

got blood all over John Wilkes Booth's lovely clean bullet. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. Exactly. I mean, look, I guess he's trying to get on any media for Western support. I guess he would have done Twitter, but it costs nine bucks to verify yourself every month. I'm sure he wanted new media but it's so expensive he had to go for traditional media. Boris Johnson said that, well basically said that all Trump was trying to do and it was it might seem to our untrained less expert heads that Trump is just caving into Putin betraying America's allies and willfully abandoning everything that America used to claim to stand for. All he was actually doing according to Boris Johnson is trying to shock Europeans into action and said people need to stop

being scandalized by Trump's words and instead help him to end the war. Now on many readings of other realities and the one Boris Johnson lives in Europe has been trying to end the war by helping Ukraine Beat Russia. I mean obviously that's it. It that's quite a big task in effect in the place of Putin's willingness to send his own people to slaughter and be slaughtered. He's not a nice man Vladimir Putin That's that's just my opinion. You know, this is an opinion based podcast I'm prepared to say that but being scandalized by Donald Trump's words I mean that to me that's a necessary step to try to achieve an end to the war

Crucially an end to the war that actually ends the war not an end to the war which gives Putin a lot more power and And I don't know determination to start another war for example But of course there are two sides to every coin and no one uses coins anymore. There are about 35 sides to every banknote once you've folded it into an origami mushroom cloud and we live in a cashless society. There are infinite sides to every cryptocurrency.

In summary, I can't remember what I'm talking about, but I'm not happy about it. Andy, listen, this winter, I don't know what got over me, but I read the official biography of Boris Johnson titled Unleashed. And in it, this is the same gentleman that at the height of the Ukraine War writes in his biography that he threatened Vladimir Putin to an arm wrestling match. I

Think yeah, I mean technically in terms of age that might be right but I mean it really depends how you measure those numbers I guess Donald Trump also He he basically declared himself king of America in a social media post to do with congestion charging in New York, which he says is going to end. He posted a mock-up of a magazine cover saying, Long live the King with a picture of him with a crown on. Now, I mean, that's a weird kind of line through history. George III, big gap, Donald Trump as King, King's of America.

But also it's kind of a bit of a weird thing for Trump to go for. Does he not realize how little power kings actually have these days? I just don't think that would suit him, to be honest. I just have to go around opening supermarkets and not saying anything. But anyway, whatever you say about Donald Trump, he's it's fair to say he's not an overly committed historian and you know he might need a little bit of reminding. There was a time that America decided having a king wasn't really its thing anymore. I mean obviously it's not worked out for them but yes I guess that does also lead to concerns about

what other aspects of America's past Donald Trump might be looking at reintroducing and I really don't want to go down that path I'm in all I would say in conclusion to this to this to this section and just the general state of the world I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say I'm starting to think that maybe Just maybe Looking at the state of the world The world has bigger problems than some people wanting to use different pronouns Look, I don't have any scientific evidence to back it up yet at the moment

It's just a hunch, but I'm thinking that might not be the biggest problem that humanity faces So yeah, I have to disagree with the leader of the Conservative Party on that. Anubhav, Trump has been getting involved in Indian politics as well. Now you've not escaped the whirling dervish of insanity that America has bestowed upon the world? That is correct. In fact, after Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister Modi was the second world leader to visit him because they're very good friends. And if you remember in his first term, he performed, Donald Trump performed in a massive cricket stadium in India to a hundred thousand people, Jindan said in the word word of English and he mispronounced

the names of Indian celebrities and creators and left. Yes. And now Modi's gone back and they hugged and immediately he announced tit-for-tat tariffs on India. So I don't know how useful the trip was, but in the Department of Government Defic, in the DOJ audit report, it has been found that USAID, the grant organization, gave 21 million dollars for elections in India. Now, no proof of this has obviously been found. The head of the Indian Election Commission from 2010 to 2012, when the money supposedly received, S.Y. Qureshi, he denied receiving this funding in his tenure. And interestingly, he also said, he's waiting for his own pension, which hasn't come through. Let alone

receiving $21 million, he has bigger problems. Now, Donald Trump's accusation was that this money was used to probably elect a rival of Mr. Modi. So was there a conspiracy? He sort of lobbed that tennis ball in the air. Big furor in India, who could this money have gone to? I can tell you one thing though, if it went for improvement of elections in India, I saw no proof of that because

you know, the day of voting, they put one leaflet per apartment building, there was no signage on how to get to the voting booth. If you've got 21 million dollars, you can spend on these things. Once you got to the booth, there was a sign saying after voting, collect a free samosa. There weren't any free samosas. The actual polling booth was a mobile toilet. So I don't know where this money has gone. So maybe there is a conspiracy, but just not the one that Mr. Trump thinks it is. the It's a lovely excuse, you know, because the Indian political party in power has been saying this is an effort by the American deep state to put the opposition congress party in power

because they're connected to George Soros and then all the usual conspiracies start. George Soros is actually Bill Gates in Disguise. But you know all the conspiracies sort of come into that vaccine George Soros area. So now here's the thing though, this is the deep state I've realized has just become an just all encompassing term now when you're feeling lazy to find anything out. I've been using deep state to not finish writing deadlines, various columns in newspapers have been telling people that the deep state has got involved and I recommend you both do it for all sorts of

things that you have to do. Well, I mean that's Definitely go for that. I wish I could have blamed some of the gigs early in my career on on the deep state Yeah, but didn't have that option at the time Well, I mean on the subject of the deep state this trust has been very very worried about the deep state and in case you were in any doubt about Elon Musk and judging Musk by the content of his character, up pops Prime Ministerial speed failure Liz Truss and proves that everything you thought about Musk and Truss is correct. For those of you who've forgotten Liz Truss, A, Congratulations, B. Please tell me how

you did it, and C. A quick reminder of her works. Well just as once it boggled the mind that you could fit the contents of the world's biggest library on a device the size of a disappointing goldfish, so Liz Truss managed to fit into six weeks basically as Prime Minister. The amount of incompetence that traditionally took a solid full two terms in office. But sadly she's found another audience in America and the CPAC conference that followed up the conference we talked about in London last week as the, I don't know, meeting of minds?

Is that the right term from the from the global, right? She said And clearly since she's been prime minister. She has not been working on her rhetorical skills because she was just as unconvinced I don't know what I don't know what possesses her arms when she speaks in public anyway Yes. Yep. Yep. The Clockwork Orange is in fact Donald Trump's secret service code name as well. Only hour, every hour some bullshit comes out. So she said, we see Trump in the Oval Office signing off executive orders and we want some of that in Britain.

No, we f**king don't, you clattering buffoon. You do not speak for this country. When you tried to speak for this country, the country said f**k right off. And also, I mean, the signing off of executive orders. I mean, I think we're quite fond of the vague idea of a functioning democracy in this country. And the democratic process bit was always a bit of a bull walk for trusts. I just don't think Britain is, I just don't think it's the British way to stand back and watch a megalomaniac autocrat unilaterally make laws without oversight or consultation. As for example,

Charles I would testify if he ever recovers from his pretty severe neck injury that he caught back in 1649. She also said, we want a Trump revolution in Britain. Let's see what the opinion polls say about that. Well, we don't unless you're comparing it with how much we want Liz Truss back as prime minister again, in which case, I mean, that's a low bar, but we might take it. And then she said, we want Elon and his nerd army of muskrats examining the British deep state.

Now, I sincerely wish there was a British deep state because if there was something in the country might actually work and if there was a deep state people like Liz Truss would be safely covertly squirreled away to a well-maintained humane secret government-run safe house to live out their days shouting at trees. There is no Deep State. We did that London Fashion Week. I've spent a bit of time in your pubs, you know, between gigs, and I've noticed a different kind of British deep state. I've noticed that your British deep state is a retired pensioner named

Clive sitting in that pub. The pubs usually called Cromwell's Head for me like that. And he's reading a book about airplanes in World War I and complaining about cyclists. This is the deep state I've encountered. Yes. But also you guys in your country do have one ability for executive orders. I think they're called knighthoods and they're mostly given to cricketers. I think the king

is allowed to do that. I don't think he has to go to parliament for that. of it. I'm sorry. Okay. There was a, you know, in one of the speeches she said that, she said that the whole point of crashing the economy and nearly crashing the British pound was an economic experiment not understood in its time. So maybe in a way she's like Galileo or Caravaggio and will perhaps be understood in maybe a hundred years that somehow crashing a currency and entirely ruining its stability in the financial markets is a good thing. Maybe that is how the world will be in the future. Well we will have exclusive coverage on Liz Truss's transformation into the Caravaggio stroke Galileo of the early 21st century over the next 500 years on this podcast

Well the Elon Musk who Liz Truss was so fond of has raised a few hackles in America after sending out Orders to US government departments telling staff to list in five bullet points their accomplishments over the past week or face immediate firing because that's really the way to get people on side and make the state more efficient. He said failure to respond by Monday would be interpreted as the employee resigning. I mean Musk's efforts to fix the US public sector as cures go Along the lines of the Coney Island amusement parks efforts to cure topsy their elephant in 1903 And if that reference doesn't work for you and it is something we've mentioned on the buglers before just carefully type the words Electrocuting an elephant into someone else's search bar and you will soon understand um

But I mean five bullet points. I must did in the in the circular email, give an example from his own his own week, the five bullet points that he's achieved, support the resurgence of the far right across Europe, a place where they should be aware of the dangers of drifting to the far right. Bullet point two, rehabilitate the Nazi salute. Bullet point three, make billions of people weep silent tears at the perversion of the free market dream. Bullet point four, make Tim Berners-Lee regret

even paying attention at school, let alone inventing the f***ing internet. And step five, reduce a large proportion of Tesla drivers to gazing wistfully at their space age futuristic dream cars and thinking, does this make me a c***? So those, I mean, that was his example for what you can achieve in a week. So I mean, he set the bar pretty high.

Correct. Correct. Yes. So in terms of sort of sorting out the public, Musk is not so much throwing out the baby with the bath water as urinating in the bath water, feeding the baby to a crocodile, and then blowing up the bathroom. So it's just he's taking it a couple of steps further. That's a very worrying hotel to be staying at. Listen, I have a confession to make. I should have said this right at the beginning of the podcast. I got an email on Friday from the office of Elon Musk saying, please list your accomplishments to be worthy to be on the Buble podcast tonight. So I made my list and I sent it in. So here are the things that I did to be worthy.

I have a yoga class as I mentioned. I've seen four of the 10 Oscar nominated films and I saw a monkey in a hot air balloon, but I can't go into any more details. But I sent it in, I sent it in. It was an Excel spreadsheet and everything. Yeah. We're all high achievers on this show. Musk through but sort of famously that at the halfway point in his journey He's basically one of those word puzzles

We have to change one letter at a time to get from the origin word to the end word And you have to do it in eight steps So he's gone from dick dick tick tuck muck Musk. So he's now husk hunk hunt. Yeah, he's gonna get there You're gonna get there hunt. Yeah, he's gonna get there. He's gonna get there. Moving across the tech verse, if that's a term, to Amazon. Amazon have bought James Bond, the famously fictitious British spy. Obviously Bond, I mean there's concerns about what this will mean for James Bond, you know, a fundamental part of our national identity here in Britain in that he's entirely fictitious, like my this will mean for James Bond, a fundamental part of our national

identity here in Britain, in that he's entirely fictitious like most other parts of our national identity. And there's concerns about what this will mean in terms of the independence of Bond, and Bond has obviously been as much a commercial franchise as an actual functioning British agent for quite a long time. Product placement has been rife in Bond films, from cars to watches to deadly attack sofas to exploding toothpaste to branded space stations to special cricket bats that open up

to release a swarm of poison-tipped wasps. That one was never broadcast. To home STD kits, which can be seen in the background of 12 Bond films, along with some somewhat optimistic homeopathic groin creams. So what will Amazon bring to the franchise? I know both of you have in the past auditioned to be the new James Bond without success as of yet.

So what are you hoping to see in the new Amazon Bondic era? I mean, look, two things are going to happen, right? One, I think we all love Bond villains, you know, all the great ones, Dr. No, Oracle Finger, Ernest Blofield. One of the main things I've always loved about Bond villains is most of them have an underground layer, right? And usually they're sitting there on a throne, it's underground, it's somewhere in an ocean and he's got alligators and stuff like that. Bollywood many years ago did their own version and they raised the stakes one higher.

Bollywood had a Bond villain called Mogambo and he had an underground lair, he had all of the stuff except he didn't have sharks or crocodiles. Under his premises was molten lava and I think that needs to be brought into the Bond films. I think they'll do a country-wide franchise like I think an Indian Bond, it's about time. I think they'll do a countrywide franchise. Like I think an Indian Bond, it's about time. I think one of the things that Bond films don't think about cost concerns. Bond is recklessly spending, Marty Nieshaken not stirred is fine,

but where is the Bond who's asking which one is cheaper and do you have a happy hour, two for one. This sort of spending in the 70s and 80s is fine, I guess in the 60s post-war Ian Fleming had an unlimited expense account. But I mean, this is bond in the age of 11% inflation. There's also rumors, well, a couple of things about what Amazon might, I mean, also, I mean, the idea of what a Bond villain is could shift, given that it's now owned by Amazon. And the boss of Amazon and his friends are essentially classic Bond villains. So we could see the series shift perceptions of who's on whose side.

But there's rumors that there'll be a crossover with Amazon's sports coverage. So there'll be half-ime analysis in future Bond films. Well, Gary, we've circled the villain here. And as you can see, he's had a great chance to finish Bond off, but he's overcomplicated. He's tried to go in for the perfect sadistic revenge line. He took too long and the chance has gone. Obviously, he's still on top, but you can't help but think

he might come to regret that by the end of the film. So that could be something to look forward to. Also, the inescapable sense that everything in the world is for sale. Like tickets for my remaining tour shows. Details at my website and his awesome and like co.uk Yes and with the world as it is now I just don't think people will accept that anymore I think they want to see something more realistic where the c***s come out on top. That brings us to the end of this week's Bugle. We'll be back next week with I'm sure some extremely happy news about the world fixing everything that's been wrong with it. So yeah, do tune in for that. Just some news breaking reaching us now. The Snutterbridge Zoo in

England claims to have bred the first ever ethical lion. The morally aware carnivore has been bred and trained to hunt only terminally ill wildebeest racist zebras and tofu based imitation gazelles. So exciting breakthrough from from science. First rule of showbiz start with bullshit end with bullshit. Thank you for listening Buglers. Details of of my remaining tour shows at my website andyzorzman.co.uk. Thanks to everyone who has come to the shows so far. And if you have anything to plug? Well, it was there when I left it the other day. I'm not saying it was in absolutely tip-top shape. I've been on the road for a few days. I saw Hadrian's Wall the other day for the first time, which again, that needs a lick of paint.

But I think London is still there, but yeah, do come and find out. Tiff, anything to plug? ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] Don't forget to join the Bugle Voluntary Subscription Scheme to help keep this show free, flourishing and independent. Go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button. At our website you will also be able to find details of the London show on Alice Fraser's book tour on the 1st of March. Do go to that and all the other stuff that all Bugle co-hosts are doing now and in the future. Until next week, goodbye.