The Bugle - Sunak Without A Trace

Episode Date: May 5, 2024

America's political climate, British elections, Scotland's political scene, and the future of AI. Andy is joined by co-hosts Alice Fraser, her newborn, and Alistair Barrie.Plus, when was the Eiffel Tower discovered? Send thoughts and questions for Andy at [e-mail]. Click follow to make sure you get every episode and please drop us a nice review or rating wherever you choose.This episode was presented and written by:Andy ZaltzmanAlice FraserAlastair BarrieAnd producer by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4302 of The Bugle, the audio newspaper that has been holding up the mirror to this visual world since 2007, albeit holding it up at such an angle that all you can see in it is the sport on the telly. I'm Andes Altman and we are recording on Friday the 3rd of May 2024, just 8 months to go until the halfway point of what has been thus far a disappointing decade for the remaining fans of planet earth and the human race. But still time to pull it back and to try and jolt this decade back towards some vague sense of trying to be a little bit less shit as it hits middle-age no judgment I've all been there I'm joined by two people who have

experienced every single day of the decade so far and are thus uniquely qualified to pass their judgment on the most recent few days of it plus someone who's only recently joined the decade, also joining us on the call. From Australia, Alice Fraser. Plus, Alice Fraser's latest baby. And from London, Alistair Barry. Hello to all three of you. Hello.

Hello, yes. Sorry, I forgot my baby. That's an entirely different podcast. So we are recording on the 3rd of May 2024, which is World Stop Believing All The Shit You Read On The Internet Day, also World Keep Things In F***ing Perspective Day, and World Come, Reinform Yourself About All Sides Of An Issue or Argument Before Spouting Off About It Online.

Sadly, all of those days have been cancelled once again. On the 4th of May, in in 1626 the Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrived on what is now Manhattan Island and as soon as the legend goes he purchased the city of New York at the knockdown price of around $24 on a box of junk, setting in train a chain of real estate chicanery and trickstery that pretty much leads in a direct cause and effect line to Donald Trump sitting in a courtroom barking at the moon as we speak. The name of the city, of course, comes from the noise Minuett made when told the asking price, yikes, which is the Dutch version of yikes, Minuett unable to control his excitement of picking up such an absolute bargain. I may have to leave the poglass now, that's tickled a funny bone I didn't know I had.

Of course it was later anglicised to York when God rightly gave the city to Britain. Rumour is that Minuit knocked the price down even further during negotiations due to traffic noise, the price of coffee and the fact that he wasn't allowed to build a casino in Central Park. What happened in 1626 is shrouded in the incompletions and fuggs of history. What I'm telling you now is probably just as true as the average of all news emanating from New York today. On the 6th of May in 1527, in 1527, just what 497 short years ago, Rome was sacked again. I mean it was sacked quite a lot Rome and when you... You can't sack me, I'm fired! I'm on fire! It was also fired, certainly during Nero's time and presumably other times as well. Why was Rome sacked? Well apparently the then 2208 year old city had started turning up late in the mornings, not completing stuff in time,

and falling well short of its KPIs and successive quarterly reviews. There was also some talk about it containing an excessive number of paintings of naked willies on its ceilings that the bosses weren't happy with at the time, so it had to go. And when you get sacked out off on Rome, maybe the problem is you, not the job. So of course then went freelance and it's actually probably happier now just tootling along as an antiques museum and visitor center rather than doing its old high-stress jobs of running an empire or a religion. So anyway many scholars consider the sacking of Rome in 1527 to mark the end of the Renaissance which has to go down as well. Do you agree with that? What a wonderful introduction. Absolutely. Someone who's just enjoyed his own has to go down as well as you agree with that

Someone who's just enjoyed his own naysongs very very Another one got exciting Just pointing closing ceremony for the Renaissance and the sack of Rome in 1527 in 1889 on the sixth domain the Eiffel Tower was discovered the 330 meter high metal prong was found by archaeologist Gussie Eiffel whilst he was looking for proof that the ancient Gauls had invented the bicycle and jetons in around 200 BC. Previously there had just been a 331 meter high mound of earth there and no one had ever thought to dig it up and see if there was anything underneath. Anyway, well I've heard history podcasts that are all the rage,

I'm just trying to muscle in on some of that filthy old Luca. As always, a section of The Bugler's going straight in the bin this week, beverages. It's National Beverage Day on Monday the 6th. So we look at the state of beverages and the future of drinking in general. Is Liquid going to be the next previously championed cultural hero to be cancelled? After all, liquid has played a role in most of the great atrocities of human history which have been performed by people who often traveled in boats or drank water. Also we look at why young people are turning against drinking anything. They associate drinking liquid with their parents generation, especially the post-war boomer generation, and now rejecting it

out of hand. They prefer to spend time on Instagram, and could become the first entirely desiccated generation since ancient Egyptian times. Again, amazing how everything comes back in cycles. Also, with tea and coffee facing an uncertain future, due to global warming and Elon Musk wanting to replace all plants with garden gnomes within 10 years, could we soon be drinking an infusion made of unwanted cushions, obsolete mobile phones and locus plasma? Too soon to tell. And what will be the new milk after oat, soy, lentil, parrot and almond? We look at the potential for potato milk, reliquified lactose-enhanced cement and wild

sweat to take over the cow replacement industry. All that in the bin. Top story this week, America is angry. I mean that's pretty much the top story every week since around about 1776, or 1773, when was the Boston Teep? 1773? 1773? Let's go with that. As discussed at various points on the Bugle. But it's particularly angry this week. There have been student rebellions against American Middle East policy which currently stands, and I haven't checked this in the last three minutes, the current official American government Middle East policy is asking Benjamin Netanyahu quite nicely not to use the weapons they're still sending him. So you can see it's a bit of a complex situation. The police got involved and unusually did not apply the usual delicate light touch sensitivity, tension-defeasing even-handedness and aggravation avoidance that the American police

are so globally renowned for. It's more than 2,000 people have been arrested. I mean that's out of almost 20 million students in the USA, so that's still quite a lot to go before the police have arrested all the students and potential troublemakers. Joe Biden has defended the right to protest but not the right to cause chaos, which I think is the opposite of what his presidential election opponent believes. So as a result, well, America is in a state of some, I don't know, ferment? Is that the right term, Alice, would you say? Yes, sufficient ferment that it's forming a new and fashionable kombucha. Police are doing what newscasters call cracking down on protesters at American colleges. They call

them college campuses. To translate for non-U.S. listeners, we call colleges universities and police crackdowns hitting people. Because it's in America, everyone's either wrong or annoying, particularly that thing that they do where they stand in front of each other in a protest situation, shouting directly into one another's mouths like the love song at the end of an opera, trying to provoke the other party into punching them so that then they get to do a lawsuit. They're like, you know, that thing where they're like hustling at each other like netball players trying to do everything short of a foul, trying to slap the moral high ground out of the other

person's hands. A lot of people are characterizing these protests as proof that the youth are alright, standing up for what they believe in and putting themselves on the line for their belief in a better world, much like the hippies did protesting against the Vietnam War and how their belief that the activated youth was a precursor to a morally better generation than the one before and I think we can all look at how the baby boomer generation turned out after their youth of protests and think ah shit. I mean it is clearly a delicate balance Alastair the right to protest, legitimate expressions of support for the various different arguments in

this infinitely complex situation in the Middle East. But it does raise a problem, how does protest cope with complexity and nuance? Because without using banners that are 250,000 words long containing a doctorate level of exploration of the infinitely difficult history and politics of the Middle East, it's kind of hard to really express what needs to be expressed about this situation. Well, it's that kind of template for so many similar comedy routines about imagine a strike on this, what do we want? A global re-enlargement of... When do we want it? It's somehow yet unspecified, filling your own blanks, really.

What slightly irritates me more than anything else is the big news story at the moment is protests in American universities as opposed to an absolutely horrific bloodbath in Gaza and that does seem to be slightly missing the point but that's very much humanity's default setting. I think as Alan's alludes to it's always interesting to see in this point how how very good it is that English British police don't possess guns. I don't know if you've ever seen them in a run-in with the EDL or any. Every time someone mentions that, you know, someone may have criticised Winston Churchill's shoe polish in 1963, a huge gang of thugs erupt onto the street, stand around his stature and protect it from absolutely no one.

It's out of each other and a number of policemen who, to be honest, give as good as they get, but with batons you do think, Christ, if these guys had guns, I mean, I mean, it wouldn't have been the Miner Strike, would it? It would have been the, you know, the Scargill Massacre. And so the only thing that's actually united anyone, if you saw that tweet tweet was students on either side shouting you Biden together which was the one time you could see them on their faces almost the relief of going yeah we all agree with which is you Biden and that would then what do we get then Trump so we're back to square one well I mean this is but is this the only way now that politics can bring people together in an age that is now so polarized that basically

everyone hates everything so we have these little moments of unity where they all shout Joe Biden but then that's going to then disintegrate as they argue over exactly the correct reason that Joe Biden should go himself and America I mean can America prove truly that it is once again the coherent nation it never actually was by having crowds shout Joe Biden and Donald Trump at the same time at each other. Literally no one turning up to the next election whatsoever as a protest vote. It turns out Joe Biden I feel like the possible solution here is just to drop him in the Middle East and see if we can get both sides chanting Joe Biden at him. Right.

Might be a first step towards peace. It turns out that by presenting himself as an almost completely middle of the road, hail fellow, well-met, benevolent grandpa who likes ice cream, he's managed to infuriate people on all six sides of politics, which is an achievement, you know. Right. Only six? I'd say there's hundreds more sides of politics now. Didn't they discover a Roman dodecahedron last week in some archaeological dig, which probably explains why it was sacked. Just to go back to the difficulty of expressing everything that needs to be expressed in a placard or a chant, like I said, 250,000 words, I reckon, minimum to explore anything legitimate about the whole

Middle East situation. Now that would be a 35-hour chant, and that's without, that's just one, rather than it being a call and repeat, which obviously would take it up to the 70-hour mark. For a decently legible banner or placard, I reckon you can have a maximum of 5 letters per metre, going in an average of 6 letters per word, possibly longer if it gets into real academic level exploration, and allowing for space between

letters plus punctuation. I reckon that would require a banner that is around 340 kilometres or 210 miles long, with letters around 30 centimetres centimeters or a foot high plus a bit of spacing between lines for legibility breaking into columns with some white space to make it easier on the eye. That would be a rectangular placard that I think would be 280 meters high by 600 meters wide and that's without footnotes, graphs, maps, diagrams, timelines, statistical appendices or a comprehensive bibliography. So that kind of shows how difficult it is and why these protests create such hostility between the

sides. Well I almost sense you're mocking the idea Andy, whereas I think what you're failing to appreciate is that creating a placard of that magnificence would be the kind of communal effort that could really bring people together in a way that almost nothing else could. Yes, yes anyway if you do have any solutions for the Middle East situation do please send them in. I feel like Joe Biden's next move is to infuriate even more people by like misgendering JK Rowling thereby angering all sides at once. Well that's, I've said this many times before, I can't remember if I said this on the bugle, but we do need a unifying

nemesis to bring the world together. In the past I have suggested this should be the New Zealand national cricket team, because you know no one hates the New Zealand, you know a very popular team, they all seem perfectly nice, but you know their captain Kane Williamson has never explicitly condemned Joseph Stalin for the atrocities he committed as leader of the Soviet Union so maybe the world can come together. He might seem to be a very likeable, equanimitous kind of guy, I'm sure he would accept for the greater good of humanity. Maybe he could be deployed to the Middle East and his perfectly technically correct batting I think would just soothe the general situation

if they just basically set up a cricket net somewhere in the Middle East with Kane Williamson batting against a bowling machine and I can't see how everything wouldn't be fixed. I think you could do you could enlarge that I think it's a wonderful plan I think you possibly enlarge it to generally just sending New Zealanders out across the world. It't just have to be Cain Williamson with his textbook structural batting, I think. You could look, a nation that grew up in a land with absolutely no natural predators and developed a sort of slightly benign

but delightful kind of persona in comparison to their nearest neighbors who grew up with every single predator on the planet attempting to murder them. Means that Kiwis, just send Kiwi's out across across the world and just go to I think you know in there just turning up in the middle of Gaza to a crowd chanting you Joe Biden that a white-haired man eating ice cream and just say how many we take a few overs with you I think I mean I think

does it also explain why New Zealand got so good at rugby that it found an activity that gave it the sense of there being predators out there to make things hunting them down and threatening physical violence. So let's move on now to other news in America and the latest from the trial of Donald Trump, the former and potentially future president words that stick in the core of humanity as much as they did when we first uttered them as the beagle came back in October 2016 just weeks before he was elected for the first time. He was fined $9,000 this week by the judge and warned he could be jailed for a month if he continues breaching court orders and attacking witnesses in his case. I mean I'm not sure a month, I think he'd probably want

a little bit more than that. I mean I think if he can do the whole election campaign from jail I think he will consider that to be giving him a better chance of winning in November. He's also during the case he's fallen asleep. He's allegedly admitted nasally disharmonious gaseous exflegrutions. And there's this kind of footage of him seemingly dozing off. I read one expert saying it's possible that he could have been meditating. Now, without wishing to judge a book by its cover, its author, its publisher, its publicity blurb and above all its contents, I would suggest that Donald Trump does not seem like a natural

meditator. Someone who turns to meditation to give him spiritual calm. I don't think that's his MO. Alice, obviously you've lived in New York, you've been a lawyer. Obviously this is just all your dream news stories come together as one, is it not? Well yes, obviously it's sort of difficult to know whether by falling asleep during his trial Donald Trump is either aged or contemptuous of the trial process or on the other hand is committing deeply poignant and meaningful satire about the boringness of the legal system and the illegitimacy of this trial process. And really, who can know at this point until there's a decision of fact

made by the judge in the court? Of course, the judge did just fine him nine thousand dollars for contempt of court and may put him in jail if he continues to be contemptuous of court. But I feel like certainly Trump doesn't believe in the old, I think it is Greek saying, you snooze you lose. Yes, that was, I think, Aristotle was, although that may have come in directly from Socrates via Plato before Aristotle wrote it down.

Very much a post-Hemlock view, I think. Yeah, I mean we can all agree that Trump is on the side of the gods. Sorry, the dog slayers. I do like the idea, the suggestion that he could meditate a man whose entire subconscious seems to operate with caps lock on He is in a position now. I think the judge has played it really quite well by just saying no That's what I'm allowed to do. I would go more I would start in jail time but nine grand and there's another four grand was Asked for yesterday and whether that comes through or not You don't know but playing due process with Donald Trump strikes me as the simplest way to annoy him

He said he just he sat there and you know He comes out and complains in that kind of vestibule and it's on the 15th floor And it's he's just an old man shouting an echoey corridor and it really kind of strips away layers of orange foundation to show you who he is. We will have full exclusive coverage of the old men shouting in an echoey corridor at each other over the next few months as we head towards the election. But who are going to be the running mates? Well, one potential running mate for Donald Trump as vice presidential candidate, Kristy Noam, this week has been defending herself against accusations

that she killed a young dog and a goat. Accusations levelled at her by herself in a book. She's claimed these, the news reports are fake news, which given that they were directly quoting her own book is an impressive leap of bullshit even by a Trumpian standards. I'm gonna leave aside the fact that the dog was called Cricket and the dog was only 14 months old but she's not the first person to think that Cricket had gone on too long or that Cricket had become too loud even but those people don't always agree. But the question is, you know, will this damage her or is Trump's supporter base going to be unsatisfied with a running mate who has only killed

a dog and a goat on just one day of gratuitous animal slaying? Is that enough to endear herself to the core Republican support? I'm not sure it is. Well she did respond to the scandal about the killing of the dog and the goat by mentioning that she had also just killed three horses. Three horses who were family friends who had brought up her daughters so I think you're absolutely right. She's used the the tales of animal slaughter in her book to prove that she's got what it takes to make it in the cutthroat goat shoot world of politics and that she's willing to do anything

from puppy put downs to horse murder if it'll help her political ambitions. I feel like the next move for Kristy Noam is to shoot two of any animals and call it Noam's Ark. Right I think we all need to take a little break at this point. I'll just just let that sit there. Let's let that sit there. UK election news now and well we've been going to the polls this week for local elections. Voting was yesterday as we record the results are... well some of them have come through, some of them still to come through the mayoral elections

in various cities have not yet been announced. The ruling party, if that's the right word, which it isn't, the sort of ruling Conservative Party have had a better than deserved result at these elections with more than 0% of the electorate voting for them for reasons that remain unclear. The results as I said not yet complete but it looks like the Conservatives have somehow and some why clung on to almost half of their local council seats. Now this is being presented as a disaster for the Conservatives, losing over half of their seats. I would say

it's a f**king miracle that they've got any. So rather than the absolutely no f**king whatever seats that they seem to be aiming for, given the unceasing shitstorm of anti-competence and national crumbling they've been excreting onto this country for years. Nonetheless, not looking too rosy for interim Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, or as he's now known Rishi Soon, my pretty Soon, it will all be over. Akk. Weird nickname but whatever works. There are rumours that Tory MPs could be contemplating ditching Sunak before the general election they are sadly legally obliged to call within the next nine months perhaps thinking they might find another leader who can lead them to an even heavier electoral defeat than Sunak is taking at the moment.

Just to prove how the system they've been running for almost a decade and a half is so stacked against them. Sunak the person who we should begin remind ourselves constantly began his tenure by losing to Liz Truss. Yes so it's it's tough for for Sunak at the moment Alistair you are our floundering prime minister correspondent on the bugle. Exactly what what level of flounder would you say that? Well I'd say as the floundering prime minister spokesman it's been a busy few years as Alice has just alluded to. My local elections, obviously Alice is coming in from Australia, so I'm sure you're probably on

the edge of your seat. My local election, there was only one seat was up for the local police commissioner in the Hertfordshire area and as yet still unknown. But I think, I mean the local elections are always funny because the kind of, the the way it's every single pundit on every side, you can just predict exactly what they're going to say. The incumbent is always going to say it's midterm and it's very difficult. Labour's going to say that any win is a joy, even if it's only crawling over the line. As you say, the idea that anyone could vote Conservative at this point in their administrative capabilities is utterly beyond me. He's going to wait to the last possible minute. The last possible

minute like most things may not be in his hands anymore because I suspect if there is a leadership challenge he'll just say, solve it and go to the country. But whenever he goes to the country I think the country is going to go to him and go, goodbye Rishi. Yes, well, I mean there was a parliamentary by-election in Blackpool South and the Conservatives put the by into by-election by losing massively. They won the seat in the 2019 general election with around about, sorry, they won the seat in the 2019 general election with a majority of almost 4,000 and over 15,000 votes.

Yesterday they got 3,200 votes, around a fifth of the votes they got in the election. It was a lower turnout, but it's a massive swing against the Conservatives. This by-election was called after the MP Scott Benton had to step down after being caught by a newspaper sting in which he suggested that he was willing to break parliamentary lobbying rules in exchange for money. Now I'm just not sure in this day and age that should be a resignation offence. To me those are the kind of skills that Brexit Britain needs in top level politics. To get these elusive trade deals with the world we need to be able we need to be willing and able to do absolutely f**king anything we need morals left in the bin where they f**king belong

line them all up with a couple of goats and see what they do he should have been made trade secretary not hounded out of his job I do think I do think the phrase caught in the newspaper stig is incredibly charitable to the newspaper. It was almost more like he walked into a newspaper offices and said, has anyone got a sting I can have? Yesterday Boris Johnson turned up to vote at his polling station and failed to bring photo ID. Now, I know in a lot of countries you probably have to bring photo ID for years, but it's a new law in Britain that was brought in by Boris Johnson's government when he was Prime

Minister and we started having to bring photo ID. It was a law foisted on the country, stroke passed by a democratically elected government, delete a quarter to preference, actually don't delete, they're both equally true and valid. It was brought in in order to crack down on the statistically, essentially to all practical purposes, completely non-existent problem of polling station voter fraud, brought in by Boris Johnson, who let us not forget,

was then allowed, encouraged, almost forced to personally choose friends, buddies, colleagues, vague acquaintances and the like, to become permanent lifelong members of parliament in the House of Lords in his resignation honours years. And yet, in an impressively British blast of willfully myopic double standards, apparently the real problem is the handful of people voting bogusly at elections that makes no difference anyway in our neutral electoral system. That was the real problem is the handful of people voting bogusly at elections that makes no difference anyway in our Neutronous electoral system that was the real problem anyway, so it was brought into safeguard our democracy Which is fancy political jargon for to stride up to try to stop people voting

You probably won't vote for us and then Boris Johnson evidently forgot his own law, which is absolutely on brand for for Johnson so anyway, it's a how many it's it this was a year one of these classic stories that in itself didn't really mean very much I say this law sort of makes a bit of sense but you know you know compared with the previous system of pointing at a random name on a printed list saying that's me where's my pencil it does you know it's a law that does you know sort of work more against I mean people say it's brought in to stop sort of young people voting or less likely to have idea.

I think it's also quite likely to stop older people voting so whether that were helps the Conservatives or not I'm not sure but it was just sort of one of these absolutely out of all the things we needed to do to improve and strengthen our democracy. I'm not sure that would have been in the top thousand on the to-do list but anyway the fact that Boris Johnson was caught out by it was rather glorious. It did illustrate once again the danger that the Conservatives frequently felt to spot which is allowing Jacob Rees-Mogg to speak in public because he is famously the man who said that Brexit border checks would be an act of self-harm, but everyone was like, you were the Brexit minister for

opportunities. Then literally sort of stood up and said, well, I mean, the voter ID scheme was a plan to gerrymander votes for our side, which clearly hasn't worked. You can just see someone in the background going, shut the f*** up, Jacob. And And I mean it has backfired, but I mean it's a ludicrous law on so many levels. I think we're a really good one to get rid of immediately as a complete, simple, open goal. There we are, back to democracy. In other British politics news, mayhem in Scotland, Humza Yousaf, the Scottish First Minister, has quat. Is that the past politics? I think it is. A Scottish First Minister. Only just over a year in post, which historically might not seem very long, but in future might be

looked back on as an epoch of changeless solidity as our mega squabble politics and the glorious release of artificial intelligence enables us to change leaders seamlessly from one bot to the next on a weekly perhaps daily perhaps even hourly basis but at the moment he's lasted just over a year it's one of those new stories away if you miss the beginning it's sort of hard to understand the SNP has been struggling for a while Nicola Sturgeon left office somewhat abruptly just over a year ago always hard for anyone to follow such a long-standing and prominent leader, issues involving her husband and party funds have caused problems for the SNP in a general sense, there's no immediate thirst for another independence referendum which causes the

SNP's defining purpose, they've been in power for a long time, things were starting to mount up, oh f**k he's f**king resigned! That's essentially what happened, he ended the SNP's power sharing agreement with the with the Green Party. And I saw that headline and then I was busy with a mix of work and researching cricket stats for a book that I will hopefully release in the not too distant future and watching the snooker. And then all of a sudden he resigned. So such is politics now. It all seemed to move rather quickly Alistair. I should say that you know we don't, although none of us here is Scottish, I did specifically choose, are you actually,

so I was gonna say, you know the name Alice Fraser, Alistair Barry, to me those were the that was the most Scottish possible combination of bugle co-hosts I could have gone for. So how Scottish are you as a percentage? Me or Alice? Well you go first Alistair. Well my mother is Scottish although you wouldn't know to speak to her, my grandparents were both from Glasgow.

My full name actually is Alistair Barry is my middle name my surname is McNeil because I yeah because when I left drama school there was already an Alastair McNeil working with huge success as you can tell from his recognisable name that I wasn't allowed so I know I'm I'm I could I'm half Scottish but obviously you know with a voice like this you have to be slightly circumspect about addressing that in Glasgow or Edinburgh. I have Scottish ancestry as well, but goes back quite a long time. So my mother's family were Calyx, and I think that was originally a Scottish name, but the story, and it's slightly murky in our family history, was that a distant antecedent was executed for sheep

rustling. Of course you originally zoltz mon. The family fled south. Alice Fraser is about as Scottish a name as you could hope for isn't it? Yes so the Fraser comes from my paternal grandfather who was christened Adolf Friedenberg in Czechoslovakia and escaped from the Nazis. He was a Jewish man, escaped from the Nazis during World War II, made bull bearings for the RAF and they said, we love the bull bearings, and they said we love the bull bearings but we do not love signing an invoice to an Adolf. Do you mind? He changed his name to the most Anglo name he could think of at the time which was Andrew Peter Fraser and that's my Scottish connection. Sorry what was his original name Adolf? Friedenburg. The name Adolf used to be a fairly normal name, but then around, I don't know why, around that time it became significantly less popular as a name, particularly among the Jewish population.

Yes. I was vaguely aware of that. So, Alasdair, so back to the SNP. Back to the Scottish politics. It's just much more interesting than the SNP though, isn't it? That's the problem. Well, if you trust the word of the taxi driver who drove me to the train station when I was in the Highlands a couple of years ago after the Edinburgh Fringe, the reason that the Scottish independence vote did not go through was because of Netflix delaying

the release of Diana Gabaldon's romantic history tale, The Outlander, in Scotland until it was too late because if it had been released before the vote, it would have inflamed too much national pride. Well, that's a beautiful, beautiful combination of kind of like the idiocy you would expect from a cab driver's opinion combined with a really left-field take on where it actually came from. They did date, the referendum did take place on the anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, it was the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 and it was

view this would you know to try to encourage a sort of a nationalist vote but I do think you know if you are voting in a polling station and you find the way you're going to vote being influenced by the result of a battle from 700 years ago you have a sacred duty to put your pencil down and walk out of the polling station. Democracy is not your game. But anyway, I mean, I will say again, the Scottish, you know, my opinion on whether or not Scotland would be better off as an independent nation is neither here nor there. What I would say as an English person living in England is please don't go Scotland. Do not leave England alone with ourselves. We're not to be trusted. And what I would say is if you do want to do

another independence vote make sure that you precede the independence vote with visions of Jamie Fraser competently fingering a time-traveling doctor. Well that is something we can all get on board with. And finally on The Bugle this week, our dystopian future is already here news now, which seems to be a section that comes back increasingly often on The bugle. And while this is particularly relevant to us as part of the podcast artistic medium, that a man has managed to interview an AI version of himself. And Alice, I know you think this is basically the future of probably not just podcasting, but all human communication.

Well, this is, I mean mean this is such a beautiful story. There's a man who has not had enough of the sound of his own voice interviewing an AI version of himself. It's not just any man either, it's the co-founder of LinkedIn, the billionaire Reid Hoffman finding a new way to say, can I connect with you on LinkedIn? By connecting with himself, he's created a digital clone that is capable of approximating the subjects, mannerisms, tone of voice, and the kind of thing that he would talk about. This feels like the ultimate end point of all podcasts.

Well, I mean, you know, you say this is a new thing. I've actually been an AI in the Zeia Altzman for about half of the Bugle episodes of the last five years, but no one seems to have noticed at all. And I think it's an exciting future that, you know, that in the future, AI in nanoseconds can basically produce what podcasts are heading, essentially. Look at the long-term trajectory of podcasting as an art form AI will take us there that in nanoseconds it can produce a podcast of you talking to yourself telling yourself what you think yourself agreeing with you and repeating to you what yourself thinks inside a different language trying to sell you a mattress

then you and yourself criticizing an AI straw man for what you and yourself claim that straw man said did or thought you and yourself agreeing that he should be cancelled, promoting a home delivery meal service and then wrapping up for the week with a lighter story that you and yourself both found amusing but which also confirmed you and yourselves strange views about the world. So I think this is really, this is taking us just accelerating the process to where the podcasting has always been heading. I think it's fascinating as Alice says, that he's the guy who created LinkedIn. And I do wonder if he actually accepted his own request

to connect first, because we've all sat around, we've all got LinkedIn and then gone, should I own the new look and you've got 700 notifications because you've never bothered checking it. To the extent that even if I was asked to connect by myself, I'd still go, who is that bloke? And check his history of whether we really had friends in common. And then I actually watched the video and it's quite unsettling.

He is, I would say, you know, someone you would not be surprised to know had a background in internet and computer sort of technology in a slightly nerdy fashion. And I started to watch the AI guy version, and I was like, this is creepy. It's just not quite right. And then to be fair, I started watching him a bit more and went, same feeling. And some people start in the uncanny valley. That's exactly, exactly that. My only book is my biggest problem. I'm a total technophobe. My biggest problem is that with the spread of AI is it's always written as a L

Which is obviously owl which is what I'm getting thoroughly sick of being blamed for absolutely fucking everything That brings the end of this week's bugle. Thank you very much as always for listening there are still I think a handful of tickets available for the Bugle live shows in London early in June at the Leicester Square Theatre I will be announcing the dates for my stand-up tour around about the end of May when everything is confirmed and there's quite a lot of dates so yeah come on I need all of you to come to all of them but anyway watch what listen to this space for more details Alistair anything to plug? Not particularly finished tour I've got a new the special of the tour is out on next up at

the moment called woke in progress and that was, I was very pleased with that so if you'd like to check that out that'll be me ranting about the world on NextUp. Alice? I am doing a writer's retreat in Switzerland in September of this year if you would like to come you have to sign up at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. I'm doing an intensive writer's retreat there. Also I've got a book for sale at unbound.com. It's called The Dancy Lagarde Reader. Just write in Alice Fraser. My grandfather went to all the trouble of having an easy to spell name, so type in Alice

Fraser. Also I host a podcast called The Gargle, which is the glossy magazine to this podcast's audio newspaper. So please tune in to that. Yes. So if you've had enough of the relentlessly serious broadsheet stylings of The Bugle, do listen to The Cargill instead. Or as well.

Next week we will have a glorious World Exclusive sub-episode for you, and then we'll be back with a full Bugle in the middle of May. Until then, goodbye. episode for you and then we'll be back with a full bugle in the middle of May until then goodbye Hi it's producer Chris from the bugle here did you know that I have a new series of my podcast Richie Firth Travel Hacker out now. It's the show where Richie Firth and I talk about how to make travel better in our very special way. In this series we discuss line bikes, Teslas, the London overground and a whole bunch of

other random stuff that possibly involves wheels or tracks or engines of some variety. God what a hot sell this is, I mean you must be so excited. Listen now.