The Bugle - The Final Billion Years

Episode Date: March 6, 2021

Andy is with Josh Gondelman and Alice Fraser to talk about screaming, warp speed and culture wars.We have a NEW SHOW. Subscribe to The Gargle and get topical jokes about everything except politicsBuy a loved one Bugle Merch (or some for yourself, it's allowed).The Last Post, keeps appearing here. Follow us on YouTube or Insta and see parts of this episode with actual video.The Bugle is hosted this week by:Andy ZaltzmanAlice FraserJosh GondelmanAnd produced by Chris Skinner. Listen to Chris' Travel Hacker here: http://pod.link/1480712081  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dancelaguard fans, you will be thrilled to know a book is coming out if you fund it via Unbound. We are publishing the Dancelaguard Reader by Alice Fraser and Dancelaguard, a glorious insight into the world of Dancelaguard, self-published romance maven, and online bestseller. If you would like to find out how to support it, go to thebugelpodcast.com. If we get enough support, we will publish the book. That's a real thing that's going to happen. Thebugelpodcast.com to a real thing that's going to happen. TheBuglePodcast.com to support the Danciler Guard Reader. Don't forget, Bugle, there's a Bugle Ticketed live stream live show on the 27th of March.

After that, there's the 27th of March. 8pm UK time. Chris, is that correct? Roughly, I mean, yeah. Yeah, that'll do. And where can people find the tickets, other than just generally on the internet? TheBuglePodcast.com Well, where you can also join our Bugle Voluntary subscription scheme

to make a one off or recurring donation to the show to keep it free, flourishing, advert-free and independent. The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Bugles, and welcome to issue 4185 of the Bugle. Those were the exact words of historian Andrew De Cricket's oxman, as he began the episode of the Bugle that marked the 5th of March 2021, 500 years ago this week. This was of course in Zoltzmann's podcasting phase, three years before the Buebel was banned by the United Nations for being, and I quote the ruling, too true to handle. Zoltzmann went on of course to become the inventor of the reduced gravity sandwich for slower digestion,

as well as the most influential trombone impersonator of his generation on the underground brass scene, and of course, the great grandfather of world emperor Zoltzhammer the merciful. But back to the 5th of March 2021, when, recording in his shed in South Zoltz' denium, then still known as London of course, deprived of sleep after some arduous cricket watching, he continued by saying audio newspaper for a visual world. I'm Andy Zoltsman, it is Friday the 5th March 2021 and I'm joined this week from various parts of the planet earth. Let's begin in Australia and a well very

early good morning to Alice Fraser. Good morning Andrew Sultzman, good morning Buglers, how are you feeling? Well I'm tired Alice I've been getting up the last couple of nights, very early the last couple of days to watch England slowly humiliating themselves at cricket, so I'm contractually obliged to do that as well as spiritually obliged to. How's things in Australia? Things in Australia are about 12, 09 AM, and we'll continue our pace at that rate, probably about a minute per minute into the future. It's not great time travel, but it is functional. And joining us from the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean,

from New York City, it's Josh Gondelman. Hello, thank you for having me. It's still 8 o'clock in the morning here, so there are some stories that I might not know about yet. Every time we have a three-continent bugle, I feel like genuinely like some kind of Uber-powerful time lord. It's incredible. I think about it. It's like, wow, all this technology spanning space and time and we're using it for podcasts. Well, we're using it to hold the mirror up to the world and the sadrists and then smash ourselves in the head with the mirror saying, why did I bother looking at that? It's only upset us. We are recording on the 5th of March 2021, on this day in 1616,

on the revolutions of the heavenly spheres, the smash hit astronomy classic by Nikki Copernicus, the pin-up boy of 16th century heliocentrism, and all-round Renaissance Martos, sorry, Polymath, was banned. It was added to the Catholic Church's index of forbidden books, now obviously they still unproven theory that the earth revolves around the sun did not go down well with El Percy Pope at the time. And Nikki Knight's guys his buddies called him was devastated that is the orbit obsessed planet bothering Astro cult page

Turner was taken off the shelves. He issued a press conference and said this is the most disappointing thing to happen to me in the last 73 years since A the book was first published in 1543 and B I died in the same year. Other books on the Vatican's emphatically not-for-reading list included at the time, Why God Sucks, by Heronimo Van Schlampau, for Dutch atheists and for-time heretic of the year in Stake Berner Monthly, Duck Quacks don't echo, because they are the words of BL Dubob, by Perse Malian Snivel, the former Royal Hornet Thologist, hence the tradition of feeding bread to ducks, so it would swell up and prevent them from Hence the tradition of feeding bread to ducks, so it would swell

up and prevent them from talking the words of the devil to the easily influenced. My story by William Shakespeare, a bit of a cheap and easy autobiography, and can a woman be a person, an inquisitive pamphlet by Walbert Philippute, or band, at the time. As always, the section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. This week, while we're outsourcing the satire to you, bugleers with your own bugle, construct your own satire or de-o puzzle. We're going to give you some words, and then some sentences to fit those words into to create a waspish piece of satire. So here are the words that you're going to have to fit into the piece of material, a horny hippopotamus, big bucket of sick, the government, shit, freshly flayed walrus pelt, the economy, revealing negligee, and f***ing, now here is the text you have to fill in the blanks with those words with the crystal player buzz where you have to put in one of those terms. Hey, what is going on with I blame.

How is that? It's like wearing a as an unexpectedly and screaming into an echoing. They can all go themselves. Am I right? So I hope you catch the satire bug from that section. It the bin. Top story this week, future of all human life news. And well, I mean, it's been an interesting time to be a human being.

I think we can all agree on that. And just how have you found, you know, just the existing as a human over the last year or so. Josh, have you found just the existing as a human over the last year or so? Oh gosh, well, I've been acutely aware of my own existence, and there's been slightly more of it as I've been gaining a little bit of mass. Basically, every day, so I feel like I've been more human than ever. And Alice, I know you're you're a long-standing advocate of human life. And I mean how do you see it at the moment? Well, you know, things aren't hopeful Andy, but nonetheless, as in the face of all contrary evidence, I will hope for humanity. Well, that is probably the worst thing you can do. We already end up upset.

Now obviously for the past year, much of human thought around the world has been focused on the question, what's the f***ing point? And well in London this week, I mean, something that's really raised that question back into the forefront is the opening of a new TIL-free Amazon supermarket in London,

which aside from offering both added convenience and a free complimentary soul chilling window into a dystopian corporatized future, is putting the machines that put the humans out of a job, out of a job, which is the disturbing landmark in human progress. So the future of life on earth is really up for grabs and some disturbing news this week that according to scientists, all life on earth will be killed by a lack of oxygen in just one billion years time. This comes from the new scientists, so we're all doomed.

Not a minute too soon, Andy. Right, yeah. Like actually the idea that we've lost a billion years at this point is, it looks utopian to me. That's really the way things are going. I'm skeptical that we'll last out the century. Do you apparently every year the level of IQ you need to destroy the world drops by one point? That is. I think possibly the greatest statistic that has ever been developed. Where did, have you just made this upwards? This is genuine science.

Yeah, genuine science. I heard it on the podcast. It never displeased anything you ever podcasted. That podcast are the sorts of all truth. This makes sense to me when you see the people who have almost destroyed the world recently. At this point, all you need is an undergrad biochemistry degree and access to some drones. By the end of the decade, it'll be a toddler with an iPad. We're doomed. No, no, no, no.

All we can do is hope to miss the window until it's like, you'd have to be so dumb to ruin the world that no one would do it because it would be embarrassing. Eventually, someone will just do it by accident. That's the red. I think that'll be kind of disappointing in a way. I mean, you'd think that, you know, the end of the world, you want us just do it by accident. That's a red. I think that'll be kind of disappointing anyway. I mean, you'd think that, you know, the end of the world, well, you want us to take your agency off it. You want it to be in the hands of some awful,

make it worth, make Armageddon worthwhile again. That should have been Donald Trump's campaign. I think more people would have, would have stuck with it. But, you know, don't take my word for that. As I said, take the word of science. Now, admittedly, the word of science is usually a batter's reliable as my world. Uh, certainly to be looking. Now, usually the word of science is about as reliable as my word. Flat is it. The world's only four elements are there. Leach is about a little CT scan as are they

signed. Electricity is called on a worm has sex with a volcano. Is it you people now? Uh, but scientists opt it's game to be fair over the last two to three hundred years. So let's cut it from slack when it says that we're all going to die in a billion years time. So I mean, it's this, it's a good thing, Josh. And you know, as a species, we tend to lack focus without a deadline. And if knowing that the world is going to end in a billion years time, doesn't focus our minds on getting all the stuff done that we really want to, because we've been putting off because we've got a job or can't have full of of solid gold canoe or on kids don't want to help us build our own space rocket

out of old wheelie bins and an old Russian fighter jet or COVID or because we're serving a 30-year gel time for a crime we didn't commit then nothing is going to focus our mind surely. Well like I think we've got to keep our eye on the ball. I think this billion year deadline that's something that's bad sure where I don't want want the world to end then. We can't be looking at cataclysmic events that far down the line. That's so many apocalypse is from now. There's climate change, nuclear war, robot uprising, robot killing, horse revolution,

COVID's 20 to 25, alien invasion, mo person, reverse invasion. Then we can deal with the lack of oxygen. I think like Alice said, it's optimistic to think that we're going to get a billion years into the future considering our carbon emissions are cooking this whole rock like a sous vide flying through space. And honestly, I don't have children and I don't know how I could justify bringing them into this world at this point knowing that they're grandchildren, grandchildren, grandchildren,

grandchildren, grandchildren, grandchildren, grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's we might have to deal with this. I don't know, you put it in those terms. We have actually now been recording for 38 hours, solid water sources. I'm accurate in everything else. Oxygen, Alice, of course, has been one of the most popular gases in the world for some time now, pretty much ever since life on Earth began. I mean, it's one of those classic can live without it, things like food, water, cricket, and the internet.

But certainly after the gas aristocracy broke down and people stopped valuing the noble gases so highly, yeah. I've never thought about it in a Russian revolution style. Oh God, it was taken to a forest in Siberia and shot. How do you think neon got all those jobs in all those signs? That's just some kind of fringe archduke. Yeah, we're all, we're all lying. I mean, oxygen could be,

could be done, it could be, it could be a thing in the past in two shakes of a lamb's tail. If each of those shakes takes 500,000 years. Now, I don't think I'm breaking either of your confidence is when I tell our listeners that, you know, when it comes to options, you are both users in a program moderation, of course. And if you are listening to you, you have a problem with excessive oxygen use, please seek professional help.

And it is possible to kick that habit. My great, great uncle used to get through loads and loads of oxygen, but he managed to quit at the age of 93 after a long illness. But I mean, what's that? load and loads of oxygen but he managed to quit at the age of 93 after a long illness. But, I mean, what's that? I'm going to do an incro… I'm going to do rock bottom, Andy. Sometimes you have to think, this is the end of my life before you can bring yourself

to give a oxygen. Give a little, I haven't really slept in the last week and I think it's starting to show my performance. Anyway, given that time is fine, everything we do will one day just be dust and the eternal void of a pitiless universe. Let's focus on what we can do about it. Now, Alice, you are a practical time travel correspondent and there's been some exciting breakthroughs in the sci-fi pipe dream of traveling faster than the speed of light itself.

Yes, indeed, and the inextremely unlikely news that sounds a little bit like fan fiction, a pair of researchers claim to have created what they are describing as the first general model for a warp drive, which is to say a spacecraft that can travel faster than the speed of light. And they say that they can do this without breaking the laws of physics, which 100%, I don't understand

the laws of physics, but I'm pretty sure they can't. And even if we have a warp drive, I don't think we should be trusted with that technology until everyone on Earth has watched every season of Star Trek in full. Yes, including Discovery and the Weird 91 with the leather jackets. As a human priority, I mean, how, how high do we put traveling at the speed of light? I mean, it's up there with solving climate change, eradicating poverty, curing all nine diseases, sorting out video replacements football, reducing the unnecessary use of the word like,

and trying to create a vaccine against being existential, disconbobulated by evolution in the human use of pronouns. Those are all equally important. Do you see what I mean? Josh, I mean, in terms of your personal, I mean, how important is traveling at fast on the speed of light to you?

Well it feels, I mean, humans have always wanted to go. That's I think something that's undeniable. We've always wanted to get away from where we were, whether it was rolling on a rock down a hill to the 19th or the 20th century Bruce Springsteen's innovation of leaving your hometown forever on a motorcycle. And this I think is just the logical extension of that. This is humans leaving their hometown of earth on a space motorcycle last chance power drive. And I think that's just the only natural.

Well, I think it sort of depends whether we want it, like if we want to do this, it sort of depends on how alien the aliens are going to be Like are they going to be like the concept of blue or are they going to be? F***able these are the options Before I launch myself Only could that's why there was so much discipline when NASA had its recent landing On Mars you can sort of sense you know, feeling of those early pictures came through

and there were no absolutely drop dead, smoking hot Martians waiting for it. Not even any craters that looked like boobs. What are we doing? I'm being like, I'm looking. Hey, hey, hey. All craters look like boobs. If you're open enough to the different kinds of boobs,

there are Josh Condon. AC ACAB, all creators are boobs. That's what that's looking is right. I'm skeptical of the specifics of this, honestly. You said they said they can do it without breaking the laws of physics and that it certainly sounds like they found a loophole in the laws of physics, which I don't like, because the laws of physics are the only ones that govern my body not being torn apart

by the gravity itself. They say that they can exceed the speed of light if basically they bend space time, right? And I think maybe we don't need to go that fast if that's how we're doing it. How about we go just under the speed of light which is still pretty good. What are we drag racing light? Then maybe we don't need to twist the universe into loops and pretzels like a coat hanger we're using to break into a car. Just let the universe be and go pretty fast. I mean, what do you say that? But, you know, I mean, we in Britain, we're pioneers of everything,

obviously, that's why we put on this planet by God, although billions and billions of years ago, when he made Britain. So, I mean, why not break the laws of physics? I mean, we are prepared to break international law. Surely, that should be giving encouragement to these scientists saying he can't break the laws of physics. These jobs worth lower abiding boffins who doff their hats observantly to their great Lord physics. About how we stop being so subservient, isn't it? I guess the only thing I know for sure about this warp drive spacecraft is that the crash test dummies they use to test it are going to look like shit when they're just obliterated

into a billion pieces falling to earth back in the 1800s somehow, confusing citizens and terrifying animals. I think that's actually how tomato ketchup was invented in a food time travel experiment. But I mean, and also, you know, it's a long shot, as you say, given the moment, you know, we're sending things to Mars and getting over excited about it, quick update on the latest Mars landings. The NASA have received a full mission report from its lander that landed just a couple of weeks ago, and it reads, and I quote, fuck all here folks, as per Chinese lander that landed on Mars recently

sent a message back saying, I think someone got here before us and has taken all the Martians away for re-education. And the United Arab Emirates Mars probe just sent a report back saying, it's just like Dubai without the buildings and with a little bit more salt.

So obviously one of the great challenges of, you know, intergalactic travel is that, you know, it takes light fucking ages to get anywhere. So humans, you know, even if we do beat light, unless we absolutely smash it, it's still going to take us ages to get there as well, even if we do bend the universe like a fucking coat hanger. But some progress, Chinese students in an experiment have spent over a year sealed away growing their own food and generating oxygen from recycled materials in an attempt

to create a similar habitat that will be maybe usable on the moon. I mean, you can question the timing of this experiment, locking people away for a year with no contact with the outside world. I don't know how much it's cost China to do this experiment, but there's no real need to pump on into that research with hindsight when the whole world is about to do it free of charge. I mean, this, how big a breakthrough is this,

that we can do a whole year with our own stuff. It's 370 days. That is four more days than the last post. And how far through the year we have to start taking Sundays off. I don't know if I can just wrap my head around the kind of the humanity of this. These are not like scientists. These are students. And to people questioning whether this is a human use of students, as Yee-Jing Ping has

replied, wait till you see what we do with Wagers. Just kidding, you'll never be allowed to see what we do with Wagers. They're working on this, right? They're isolating in hopes that the science will people live on the moon. And I can't wait till after your isolation, our modern science gets us to a place where we can eat at restaurants again. Obviously. I think we're all prepared.

Like you're saying you need to live on the moon psychologically, if not agriculturally. I do think I'm a little less impressed than maybe some people are with this experiment. Sure, the people of China having students grow crops with recycled material and isolation. But recently, for a week, thanks to American leadership, the people of Texas learn to live without electricity. So, I think thanks to head crews, you know? It was just teaching his people to be self-sufficient. You could do that electricity. And they could do that him and his family is like, he's off to Mexico. He's dead, Cruz, you know? He was just teaching his people to be self-sustaining. He could do that electricity.

And they could do it without him and his family. He's like, he's off to Mexico. He's always talking about how we're falling behind China. Well, now he's doing something to catch us up. And like, this is true. This is a true fact from the story, is they brought in 2% of what they need, right? It wasn't 100% self-sustaining.

They brought in 2% of the materials they needed, including toilet paper, which is smart. That's a product you don't want to be reusing. You don't want to get thrift store toilet paper. You're not trying to recycle, reduce, reuse, maybe bring in some new toilet paper. Well, I feel like this is, this is a real shame that it's China who's doing this moon mission because if I know anything about the moon and I do not, it's that the moon is made of cheese and there is a far higher proportion of lactose intolerance among ethnically native Chinese people than in other populations. Oh right, that's well maybe that's why they're putting so much effort into researching the feasibility of it. Send the friendship and they can just eat the floor. Well, I think maybe that's, that's, has been happening.

They send a new load of French people up every month and they just nibble it down until there's none left and then they have to let it regenerate and send some more French people there. But the, I mean, possibly the reason China's looking to build a colony on the moon is looking for somewhere even further out of a site and be mined to keep their reeducation candidates. And because, yeah, let's talk about a boycott of the Winter Olympics, due to be held in China in 2022.

But we're not going to need an Olympic boycott, if all they human rights and abuses are 230,000 miles away. I mean, no one's going to be that fast. That is, that's so far. We can't even see it with a decent telescope. I mean, they can do what they can do. And no one's going to bother telling athletes to abandon their lifelong dreams of Olympic glory. So we can swage our collective guilt while keeping those conveniently cheap electrical goods coming over. If the human rights abuses are taking place for a million kilometers away, it's the crow flies if the crow

of course is in a rocket. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM the latest in in exciting states of aliens news. Yes indeed Andy the latest Chinese state surveillance is called sharp eyes it is aiming for 100% surveillance of all public spaces in China putting the oh shit into oh shit a panopticon putting the terrible into water terrible dystopia and the scape into futuristic hellscape for technologically targeted scapegoats and corruptible data. Which of the two scapes was that? That was the second scape, the first scape just was self-contained. OK, wrong.

The problem with this Andy is not just that it's happening and that it's terrifying and that it's definitely going to be misused. It's that the people supported, apparently, an analysis of more than 76,000 government procurement notices said that in 2018 officials spent as much on surveillance as they did on education and more than twice as much money on surveillance as on environmental protection programs. In some instances, Chinese citizens even crowdfunded these surveillance programs, which is mind-bogglingly sad.

Like, this is shuffling the deal though they're going to f*** you with it. Family, show. I think mind-bogglingly sad is this decade Tinder profile. And this 100% surveillance, that's going to just be, like you said, they've crowdfunded, sometimes people have crowdfunded it. This is managed to achieve in 15 second increments via TikTok, right?

That's the surveillance they were talking about. To self-survailing, opting in. Sharp eyes, the name of the program, Sharp eyes, does sound like an HBO prestige drama about a far-sighted assassin. So congratulations on your future Oscar, Nicole Kidman, or more likely if it's about the country of China, Scarlett Johansson, congratulations

on your future, Emmy. Here in the United States, the government has the decency, I'm a little disgusted by this plan. And here in the United States, the government has the decency. I'm a little disgusted by this plan. And here in the United States, the government has the decency, not to announce programs like this, until the Freedom of Information Act reveals they've had one for years already.

And we've all been subject to it. There's so much surveillance, but there's so many people who live in China, and they're gonna surveil 100% of public space. That's just so ambitious. I haven't even seen the sopranos yet. But... And they're watching everyone all the time.

That's so ambitious. You said the sopranos was just a load of surveillance videos of like strong together. I'm not saying that's just what Italian people are like. No. I'm just saying they've got all this footage. If I were doing all that surveillance, I would never get around to monitoring the citizens.

I would just be like, I've heard it's great, but I'm gonna rewatch 30 rocket. Well, isn't this a side effect? Cause it's been all this talk, but with COVID and with robotization, what jobs are our kids, my kids generation going to do? And surely, if China is surveilling

all one and a half billion people in China, then my kids are gonna have a steady line of work watching videos of Chinese people going about their daily business and telling the Chinese government all about it. They're gonna have to outsource their SV&Age and their surveillance. And then we're gonna have to,

there's gonna have to be another layer of watching the people who are watching the surveillance video to make sure they're not up to no good. So it's gonna be who watches the watchers of the watchers. Or as they call it, surveillance Google box. But I mean, this is a problem of an increasingly secular world and I mean, all this work used to be done by God on his own. Ha ha ha ha.

I once- But he was all over the place. Look, if we're automating God, I feel like the rest of our jobs don't stand a chance. And other news related to the future of human life conversations, well, you expect them to end within a billion years as well, particularly after research saying that we're not very good at them. Apparently conversations often end either later or earlier than people would like because people are unwilling to say what they really think about the dialogue they're involved

in. This is due to a scientific study in the United States, time once again for the Bugles' Regulical Science Focus for F*** sake! Another piece of totally unneeded research, but it's interesting that this idea, they say that people mask how they really feel. Now, of course, actual physical masks are all the rage these days, very trendy over the last 12 to 14 months. But let's not forget that the metaphorical mask has been one of the most popular fashion accessories for the entire history of humanity. And remember, people, the metaphorical mask behind which you hide your true self is not just for you,

because when you put up a mask to hide your true feelings in a conversation or just in life in general, You're not only protecting yourself from being infected by other people's toxic personalities You're also protecting them from being infected by exposure to you being a real prick Well Andy, I have to say I wish you'd stop talking about 20 seconds ago I feel like that was Apparently this is really interesting data conversations either in later or earlier than people want them to because everyone's sort of too polite to say whether they're enjoying themselves or not.

So I've decided to have a constant gladiator style thumb angle in the kitchen, which will tell the people I'm talking to how I feel about any given conversation at any time. And often it will be at odds with all facial signifiers and I will tell you to your face that it is not signaling a thumbs down right now but it absolutely is. The idea that is that people are too polite to say how they really feel, right? And to that I say, good.

I would rather we all linger a little too long in a conversation or hit the eject button a little early for someone's comfort rather than just saying like, I'm bored with you now, bye bye or like someone I like more just walked into the room. Ta-ta! I just think like, yeah, that's how it's supposed to go. We live in a culture and a society not to sound like the f***ing joker. But like, yeah, sometimes you're going to talk a little longer or a little less than you

want. They say, oh, the conversation sometimes ends a little earlier, sometimes ends a little later. When should a conversation end? Shut the fuck up nerds, just let people talk. We're trying to laugh, we're trying to get laid. Like, just let the conversations happen and end when they end.

We're not trying to optimize conversation. This is like, this is like what leads us to everyone drinking soilent for all their meals. Just like, let us have conversations and eat hamburgers and sometimes we're awkward and sometimes we die and that's how it goes. Soilent is very good if your lactose intolerant incident. But I mean, also, I guess the fact that we mask our true selves during conversations

is one of the things that kept, like Donald Trump out of the White House for 240 years of American history. And in fact, the fact that the anonymity of the internet is enabled us to drop those masks and be our true self. I'm interested in this study about people just being too polite to converse the way they want But I live in New York City. I grew up in Boston. I have not found this to be the case In New York a conversation that goes on for too long is like when you bump into someone on the street And you're like you and they're like no you and you're like, uh, this should have ended after my

Well, um, uh, listen, so I'll put this to you if I may take the liberty of asking this in a podcast that has now been going for 13 and a half years and issued almost 500 full episodes around 600 if you include the sub episodes. Is it fair to say that some conversations go on way too long? Do it, do it back to us on that. American culture wars now and Josh no side of a ceasefire in the culture wars of the woke and the asleep meeting for a Christmas day football match. It's going on and on this war. Yeah, it's like the civil war between people who were glad the civil war was won by the north and people who think it was won by the South.

That's kind of what's happening here. Yeah, there are six Dr. Seuss books that the Dr. Seuss' foundation is not going to continue printing because of racist imagery within the books. And there's like kind of a conservative outcry over that. And it's true. If you take all the racism out of children's books and you take the racist children's books off the shelves How are Republicans going to teach their kids to be racist? You know what I mean? It's just like how how are the racists supposed to instruct their children? They can't do that with multicultural books of today Republican the Republican party at this point exists like 80% to financially prop up anything

that's publicly accused of being racist. Because the Dr. Suss is now at the top of the Amazon charts and he's not releasing new singles. You know, it's just people who are like, we got a whore Dr. Suss in our Doomsday bunker so we can have dubious imagery of Asian people in our child in our children's books. And like it's just so wild

that that's like the republicans reason for being right now. Like if they were around in the 1930s, they would be clamoring to support the crude amateurish paintings in Hitler's Etsy store. What? I mean, you say that their conservatives, conservatives, basically America, all about taking personal responsibility, not long on other people to do stuff for you.

And if they're worried about lack of access to some of these more marginal Dr. Shustitles, what do they take responsibility and draw their own books with which to inculcate racial biases in their children? It's about time. People have personal responsibility for passing on their prejudice. You know, it's about time. Leave me with a personal responsibility for passing on their prejudice instead of outsourcing it to a dead author.

Yeah, seriously, it's right there, Bartholomew and the Jew Black. Come on, guys. I feel like you're not even trying. Well, I feel like no one is really trying at this point. This is such a confected outrage and the usual suspects are usual suspecting all over themselves in a real who's who of you, you.

And... Don't put, these people are pretending that they care about Dr. Sous. They don't know that none of them has even thought about anapestic 10th Travator in the last 20 or 30 years. They don't give a shit. They're not happy to... And now they're constantly like, they're running around and claiming that people are going

to rewrite Dr. Suss and change it all and it'll be, you know, it'll be, and today the great Yurtle that marvels as he is king of the mud. That is all he can see. And by mud, I mean mud. I don't mean to imply that Yurtle does blackface. He isn't that guy. Historical harms never, he, Yurtle never endorses. He's O He's okay with modern leftist discourses. It's Then it's not gonna happen. I was trying to take away your childhood and even if they did even if they it became the cat in the Culturally sensitive non-appropriate of hat. It's like Give this shit. It's for kids. You could read them a cereal box in a sing song voice and It's for kids, you can read them a cereal box and a sing song voice and they do that.

You are just destroying the children's book publishing industry with that kind of comment, Josh. Donald Trump Jr. the son of the former president complained to Fox News. Of course, he said that left winners are canceling Dr. Jute. There is no place that they won't go, which is, I guess, a little ironic, given that there's only one place that Donald Trump Jr. is going, long term at least, and it's very hot, very totally hot, and the boss is even more of a dick than Donald Jr.'s current overlord. But I mean, it's, I guess we do need to re-examine a lot of these old children's books. From Thomas the Tank Engine, very popular over here, Radical Anti-Bus Agenda, clearly signposted.

Peter Rabbit, well, let's just say the original Peter Rabbi, was a very, very different book indeed, people by the standards of the day, it was two different. And while from Zeus's, Dr. Zeus's over a green egg and the ham was what was patently anti-environment, anti-feminist and anti-subitic, if you read it well absolutely hammered. And the law acts, that's obviously about a Jewish lawyer. And if I read it in a Guardian article about this. Dr. Sussan's first published book was called The Pocket Book of Boners.

Boners had a different meaning in those terms. That was a term for mistakes essentially. It was just kind of appropriate I guess. But that's now after print. Yeah, so if you're like, you can't erase history by stopping publication of Dr. Sussan's books. Read that one to your kids Read Dr. Sussis boner Compendium to your children because everything that happened in the past has to keep happening or else the world ends

Texas update now well we covered Texas last week with particularly focusing on Ted Cruz, but more Texas news governor Greg Abbott is opening Texas up fully in an effort to resbred COVID I think and there's a repealing the statewide mask mandate. COVID cases in Texas have been going up recently against downward, the down with USA nationwide trend. So I guess what better time to give the virus a real boost just as it's Merrell must have been beginning to sag. This is, I know it's become such an issue of political identity, Josh in America, hasn't it? The masks and the politicization of mask goodness. Yeah, it's such a thing, right? Like the idea of wearing a mask has become such a

Yeah, it's such a thing, right? Like the idea of wearing a mask has become such a political signifier, which is like, it's also, that's not the way it is with other public health, right? Nobody's like, oh, I believe in rugged individualism, so I reject chemotherapy, right? Like this is, it's just this one. And Greg Hybet opening Texas up, opening restaurants to full capacity, repealing the mask mandate.

I truly can't believe that the citizens of Texas were better off in the Halcyon days when their politicians were just fleeing the country during crisis, rather than just abandoning them to the ravages of disease. Three out of four of Abbott's COVID advisors were not consulted on this decision, which is bananas to me, because you consult four medical professionals for the most minor decisions in this country, right? Like without knowing what three out of four

dentists think, we wouldn't know what toothpaste to use. We'd just be rubbing frosting on our gums as our teeth fell out. Joe Biden called this Neanderthal thinking, which is a little unfair, because I think Neanderthal leaders couldn't possibly have had this much information about the natural disasters that were wiping out their citizens. So like the Neanderthals, I think we're, you know, they were doing their best. Well, Greg Abbott opening up Texas just as they are starting to release the vaccine in large numbers. Is the guy on the spaceship with the weak chin who just when they're looking like they might dock successfully despite the damage to the port side engine suddenly lunges for the airlock screaming?

I've got to get out of here. Like this is that guy. And calling it Neonithal thinking, I think is kind. But watching the confected outrage of the right-wing stumbling over themselves to smugly claim that they're offended on behalf of their 2% Neanderthal blood is such a clumsy insult to the very idea of satire that I have officially challenged all of them to a duel to the death. Like, what is the target of that? Who are you mocking? What is the function?

Who's this joke for? I thought you didn't believe in evolution. Everything about it is so bad that I just want to gag them with their own overlong Trump cosplay necktie until they give up on human speech. I think everyone that you would want to do to the death is currently dueling themselves to the death by refusing to wear a mask

and like going to like Joe's spitting each other's mouth saloon just to prove a political point. Well it is weird when you see all the evidence of the dangers of releasing your lockdown prematurely particularly as cases were already going. I mean it's like a compulsive gambler returning to the roulette table saying I can fill it in my waters, this one is mine. I'm going all in on yellow. Are you sure, sir? It's been a while since yellow one. Do you almost stand on yellow?

It's really trailing behind red and black, those two naked naked, and it's even struggling against green. F*** you, you f***ing snowflake. I'm all in on yellow. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP B Screaming COVID test news now, Andy and a Dutch inventor has now come out with and announced what he thinks is a better method than the old Swabup the Knows method for testing for coronavirus, which is to step into an airlocked cabin and scream. Which I just think is such a beautiful, is such a beautiful, everything. I really want to see this happen. Andy

I'm going to just get people to scream in in boots and not even test them for the coronavirus. I think it'll be therapeutic. I can see boot screaming really take it off. Screaming in a in a soundproof booth alone, that's just podcasting. So I'm ready. I feel like I've been preparing for this co-pandest for years. I've been studying without even knowing it. Isn't it nice to know that you're doing the right thing by accident? That's also how I felt this year when they made obesity, a comorbidity in New York and the threshold of a BMI, which is like a largely fraudulent diagnostic for health,

but now it can qualify for you for the vaccine. And I was like, I knew I was eating all that pizza for a reason. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Well, that brings us to the end of this week's bugle. Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed it. Alice, you weren't in fact as we record. You are about to record another issue of the gargle. Just remind our listeners all about the gargle.

Yes, indeed, Andy. If the bugle is an audio newspaper for a visual world, the gargle is the glossy magazine to that audio newspaper. And it's a satirical news podcast that touches on everything except politics, and it's a lot of fun to do. So last week we had the, you're very own Josh Gondelman from the other side of this screen that I'm looking at right now and John Luke Roberts of famous of the last post and then this week coming we have Tiff Stevenson and

Harry Condobolo. So it's going to be a lot of fun. Also if anyone's in Melbourne I'm going to be doing the Melbourne International Comedy Festival From the fifth to the 18th in the Greek Center and if you're not not in Melbourne, I will be streaming it via my Patreon, patreon.com. Slash Alice Fraser. How international is the international company festival this year? Extremely un-unternational. The Melbourne National Comedy Festival this year. Well, given that every time we have like three cases, all the state borders close,

it might just be the Melbourne, Melbourne comedy festival. So, do go to Alice's show then. And I think Tom Ballard's got a show as well. And well, just to support it, just to support the concept of going out to see things. It's a great festival. I've done the post-Jot and E shows to alert our listeners to. Oh gosh, I love a podcast called Make My Day.

It's a comedy game show where there's one guest every week and they always win So that's I mean until I move to Texas like a like a young Joe Rogan. I'm still waiting for Life shows to be safer And we will play you out now with some lies about our premium level voluntary subscribers. Laina Lersh thinks ladders are underused in society, leading to unnecessary expenditure on staircases, escalators, gates and the like. Laina explains, if everyone was legally obliged to carry their own ladder everywhere, we would not need to build so many stairs in buildings, freeing up much needed floor space,

and we wouldn't need so many doors or gates in walls, as we could just whip out our ladders and hop over the top. Laina adds, it would probably improve overall social fitness levels too. Daniel Gutierrez is constantly disappointed by rainbows. They promise a great deal complains Daniel, but generally fail to deliver, both in terms of crocs of gold at the end and portents of hope. They don't really serve any practical function, continues Daniel. If you could slide down them of course, that would be a different matter, and they don't pay tax, so I would ban them forthwith.

Colin Platt realized he had probably fallen out of love with modern art, when he found himself in a trendy gallery, staring at two smooth white cubes placed at curious angles to each other in the middle of a room, and shouting, come on you overgrown dice, evoke something! On being informed by a gallery attendant that the victims of his rage were in fact Natalie designed seats, and that the work of art was in fact a single grain of rice hanging from the ceiling, he left the gallery, and bought a book about 17th century Dutch landscape painters. For many years, George Kennedy labored under the misapprehension that Russian Orthodox

was a special religion for medical practitioners from Moscow who specialize in muscles and the skeleton. The Russians' love and abbreviation, notes George, so I'd assumed Orthodox stood for orthopedic doctors. He realised his mistake when marching into the Trinity Ismolowski Cathedral in St. Petersburg and bellowing, what's a guy got to do to get an arthroscopy round here, before being asked, not particularly politely, to leave. Sailor Ellen Underwood hopes one day to publish a series of books, speculating on what the

lives of famous composers would have been like if some aspect of their careers had had to rhyme with their names. I think Mozart's flowcharts speak for itself, says sailor, and I definitely read Handel's scandals, whilst the composer of the 1812 overtures attempt to sell Indian tea and other caffeine-rich hot drinks would make Chikovsky's Choyn coffee scheme an absolute Christmas must read. And finally, Christian Andrierson is right on board with this idea, and has offered a contribute to the series a tome about a renowned Italian operator successes on the golf circuit and a German romanticist's dabblings in the property market. Christian volunteers

I'll do Verdes Burdes and Strausses houses but I do absolutely draw the line at anything to do with Debussy. Here and if this week's lies and it was with those lies that Andy Zollsman concluded the episode of the fifth March 2021 that proved exactly half a millennium ago such a turning point in humanity's battle against the rising tide of dolphin civilization. Goodbye!