The Bugle - The Most American Thing in History...

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

Elon musk's million dollar cheques, Christopher Columbus & drug dealing snowboarders. This week we plunge deep into the weird (and not so wonderful) with quite literally a mountain of global headlines to wade through.Andy is with Alice Fraser and Josie Long in a podcast that is funded by you, the listener...Hear more of our shows, buy our book, and help keep us alive by supporting us here: thebuglepodcast.com/This episode was produced by Chris Skinner and Ross Ramsey-Golding  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Buglers and a belated welcome to issue 4318 of the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world with me, Andy Zoltzman, currently in Islamabad, capital city of Pakistan. And if you don't believe me, listen to this. The distinctive sound of a hotel room in Islamabad, Pakistan. There, I think I'll prove that good and proper. I've been sent to Pakistan on a fact-finding mission by the BBC, and I've found a fact that cricket is awesome. One more of the three test matches to go, and then I'm back in the UK to find out another

fact. How many of you bugglers are coming to see my tour show beginning on the 1st of November? Dates at Andy's answer. I've got the plug in right at the start. I don't often do that. Today we set what I believe will be a podcastery first. There may have been previous podcasts featuring three people in, irrespectively, Islamabad, Tokyo and Glasgow, but I very much doubt there will ever have been a podcast featuring three people

in those places who are specifically me, Alice Fraser and Josie Long. So this is truly a moment Alice Fraser and Josie Long. So this is truly a moment of history. Hello to both of you. It's a world first. Yeah. I mean, this is... Can you feel the history in the air, Josie? I can feel it. I'm enjoying making it. And I hope that this is the only way the three of us ever come together again. The best place to meet, I find. I've had most of my social interactions on recording devices for about 17 years now. Almost exactly 17 years, in fact. So I think we had our 17th birthday last week, the bugle. Alice,

you are in Japan. How's that going for you and Japan? I mean, it's going really well for both of us. Not so well for our bugle recording, which was actually scheduled yesterday, which I missed, and then rescheduled for today, thereby having to cancel my daughter's third birthday dinner. So I'm both a bad co-worker and a bad parent. We are recording on the 22nd of October, 2024. We were due to record on the 22nd of October 2024. We were due to record on the 21st of October until aforementioned complications delayed the recording. Had we been recording on the 21st of October, it would have been the 145th anniversary of

Thomas Edison applying for a patent for his design for an incandescent light bulb. This was arguably one of the most important moments in human history. It sparked a huge increase in the rate of human brilliant ideas, facilitating, as it did, the light bulb moment, prior to which the quickest a human could have an idea was the time it took to safely light a fairly large candle, which could be several seconds, slowing down the train of thought, or of course, before the early 19th century, the donkey cart of thought. Since Edison quite literally lit up the alleys of the world with his light bulb, we've raced ahead with brilliant idea after brilliant idea, whereas before it took us basically about 4,000 years to

move from learning how to point with a stick to developing the cravat. So well done, Edison, for accelerating human progress. I think today's actually anniversary of him going back to the painting office and saying, have you done it yet? And then saying, no, you only dropped it in yesterday. It's not bad. It's still a big anniversary. Yeah, huge. I've already said, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've shamed my family. I've shamed my nation.

And your nation is very good at shaming itself, Alice. It doesn't need any extra help. We taught you well. On the 24th of October in 1648, the Peace of Westphalia was signed, marking the end of both the Thirty Years War and the Eighty Years War. People really knew how to multitask in those days, to be fair. That's a real commitment to have two wars overlapping by 30 years. Also, if you've got an Eighty Years War going on, do you really want to schedule your Thirty Years War up against the last 30 years of the Eighty Years War? Well, yeah. I mean, viewership numbers can only stretch so far. People obviously loved the war in the early 17th century. So, anyway, luckily, since the

Peace of Westphalia, there's never been another war. So we've learned our lessons. As always, a section of The Boogle is going straight in the bin. This week, we have a special retro travel section as people are getting more and more into eco-friendly nostalgia-fuelled holiday making. We tell you how to recruit a full crew to row your ancient Greek tri-room around the world without breaking the bank. We give you donkey comfort tips for the 21st century backside, how to avoid posterior pain when into the third month of your transcontinental shuffle, and how to keep busy and entertained whilst living in a cave. What to do once the possibilities of bison drawing have been fully explored. Also in the bin, we have a celebrity injuries section.

More and more celebrity influencers are showing off their injuries to their followers on pseudo social media. We tell you the latest fashionable new injuries you might like to copy from celebrities. The broken forearm sustained karate chopping and the electricity pile on show you're prepared to get injured whilst making a pointless point about something to do with climate. Branch scraping, how to do pull-ups in the woods to be at one with nature whilst also keeping a ripped physique and ensure you have the marks on your hands to show off to your friends and followers. Plus more complex injuries such as the leading muscular injury influencer YouTube Ouchy Babouchy has recently suffered, including the quadratus terciapablasion, the predominant causal glutex rebuffering, and of course his well-known upper groinal lumbar

insprayment. That section is in the bin. Top story this week. What's that sound you can hear, Buglers? That is the sound of America choking on its own political vomit, which of course has been made more likely by the fact that it's been feasting on its own political vomit for decades now and never chewed things over properly. Just a couple of weeks to go now. Ah, reflux redux. Just a couple of weeks to go now until America chooses between on the one hand, full self-immolation, complete resignation as a vaguely serious and tenable nation and making Margaret Atwood think I might have underwritten it, if anything.

And on the other hand, not doing those things. It's an awkward time of the four-year political cycle, isn't it? You basically just have to sit back and let America be America and prepare for whatever shit storm emerges. How have you been enjoying the election? It's definitely gone from handmaid's tale to handmother's tale to handcron's tale. Andy, it is full tale all the way. And it's simultaneously exciting and boring.

It's terrifyingly, in a boring way, upsettingly worrying in a way that has sort of lost all its savor. There's no fun in the depression anymore, Andy. It's just really wearing me down. It's kind of schrodinger's shitstorm, I guess. Josie, I know you are our American politics correspondent. I feel like this election feels like a remake of 2016, where they were like, wow, we know that Donald Trump really got people's attention, so we're bringing back,

but we're not going to bring back Hillary. We'll just do the same, but it will be weirder and worse. And hopefully people won't realise that the last one was so recent. They'll just be like, oh, this is the canon version of it. And it just feels like I didn't imagine that Donald Trump could be weirder and worse. And yet here we are, like my most thrilling time, him just stopping an event he was doing to put on his iPod. Yeah, I mean, and we restarted the bugle. The bugle relaunched just before Trump was elected in 2016. And from the fact that we're back, how...

Do you feel responsible? Well, I do feel quite responsible, actually, because we'd been off air for about a year beforehand and into that gap came Brexit and Trump. So I feel that's a responsibility I have to bear with me every day. I'll tell you something new that's happened, which is Kamala Harris dared to appear on Fox News. It was really like new in a retro way, like the olden days, politicians unafraid to speak across political barriers.

I mean, not since Al Gore went and personally addressed the concerns of a factory farmer have we seen such political courage. Like when Abraham Lincoln went to talk to the anti-big tall hat brigade or when George Washington went to Dirtyton to delay their fears that his name would oblige him to wash their pleasingly dirty town. It's just such a depressing indictment of the modern news landscape that that his name would oblige him to wash their pleasingly dirty town. It's just such a depressing indictment of the modern news landscape that politician goes on news is news. Well, I guess that's because Fox News is not news.

So I don't know where the self-eating snake that is modern news media. It's not news, but nor is it Fox News. It's not the news of foxes. Fox News, if you've not heard of it, is so-called because it feasts on absolute rubbish. It makes a god-awful noise. It shits everywhere and leaves an atrocious stench wherever it goes. I read a headline that said that it's grievance theatre. It wasn't an interview. And when you try and watch it, it's so adversarial, it is pointless. You know, like the things

that the guy was coming out of, he was just like shouting about immigration and then shouting about, shouting transphobic talking to you. Oh, sorry. That's just notes that I'd written on the Labour Party conference. What I was disappointed was when I looked at what we were covering this week, that there was no other way for me to be rude about Keir Starmer. So I thought I've got to get it in somehow. I don't know how, but we're getting it. You've done well. Yeah, you've bent that one in from outside the box. It's Greedance Theatre. Greedance Theatre is one of the venues on my forthcoming UK tour, in fact, so I could buy your tickets. So essentially, it seems to be Harris's attempt to reach out via Fox, which is essentially Trump's personal publicity channel, to voters who

might theoretically wake up from their spiritual coma in time to vote for her on the 5th of November. A date when, of course, there is a bit of a tradition of people trying to destroy democracy. So I think that date could play into Trump's hands. I mean, it's hard for Harris, I think, to overcome Trump, particularly because Trump has a new backer this week. That is God, apparently. Trump has claimed that God, specifically the hand of God, is leading him. I mean, that's one of his more outlandish claims, I think, for me, to claim that God, I mean, this is a man who's clocked up over 30,000 lies in his

first term in office at a rate of more than 2.5 bull sheets per working hour at the official internationally accepted term. But I mean, God has yet to confirm or deny Trump's claim and it was a day or two ago that he made this. I mean, it seems slightly unlikely, doesn't it? But I mean, God is out of form, to be fair. I feel like it's easy to make fun of Trump for this kind of unhinged behavior or his bizarre statements or his weird personal style. But I feel like whenever I do, I'm falling into a trap that he's laid. Because he's treating politics as WWE wrestling. It does not matter to your fans if you're a heel or a face, as long as you are continually entertaining, continually getting the camera on you.

And to his fans, his job is to revoke whoever they think are their shared enemies, whatever it is, the woke or the elite or the United Spirits of all ex-wives. His policies are so secondary to that goal that they might as well be non-existent. And you can tell that because they're basically non-existent where they're not actively inimical to the basic well-being of his fan base. And I think that's because for politically disenfranchised people, like federal politics feels like it's far off in the distance and doesn't have any real and direct impact on their day-to-day benefit, you know, any

benefits or negative impacts feel like they're sort of diffuse trickle down fountain of feces stuff that sort of is just part and parcel of living in America. And you can tell that by the fact that both parties blame each other's previous policies for all bad social outcomes and take credit for everything good that happens by pointing to their own policies and no one can fact check it because it's all happening so far above day-to-day concerns, it might as well be bird gossip. I enjoyed very much. And I enjoyed, there's always, yeah, there's a sick sadness to any enjoyment that comes from anything coming out of this election.

But I did enjoy very much Donald Trump just stopping an event that was geared towards the public, asking him questions so that he could just put on his playlist and saying, who wants to hear questions? Just play my playlist. I don't want to, I don't want to answer any questions. And the vibes he was bringing were so my six-year-old on a weekday dinner that when the playlist came on, I was like, it's going to be Frozen 2, songs from Frozen 2, the empirically worst Frozen film. And then when they interviewed people afterwards, somebody said, I felt like

I was just sitting in a room with him. I was like, you were. That's all that was happening. That's what he did. And I don't know, like you say, it is not necessarily good that politics has been reduced to spectacle. It is not good at all that a fascist is like standing bopping to some music and people are ignoring the plans that he has. However, I would also like to posit that it is funny. I think that's fair. And it's also arguably the least divisive, most responsible, and most philosophically coherent thing he's done for more than eight years. Just standing on a stage,

just swaying from side to side. I mean, if he would commit to only doing that for the next four and a bit years, I wouldn't be so worried about him winning the election. What happened, I think, was somebody keeled over in the audience, right? He was sort of halting proceedings in a sort of a benevolent way to let them have time to clear out. Then instead of sort of retreating backstage, which I imagine would have signified weakness, or sitting quietly, which I imagine is incompatible with his psychology, he decided to play Ave Maria. They played Ave Maria and then he said they played the wrong Ave Maria and they needed to play the one with words in it, specifically Pavarotti. Then they played it again.

And then did they bring him a sandwich and he said, no, I don't want it in triangles, I want it in squares. And then threw it on the ground. The Democrats have suggested that this latest display raises further questions about Trump's mental capacity for the job. But raising those questions, that is a minimum of eight years too late. And it's not going to make any difference. Those millions and millions of supporters who seem set to vote for Trump have clearly decided they want a president whose mental capacity is not up to the job. Just every piece of evidence that backs that up, I think, will only help him on the 5th of November. The problem is, obviously, on the left, we're in an echo chamber, and so we're getting these

bit of an echo chamber and so we're getting these picked selections of his worst moments. Randomly selected cherry picked moments that just happen to all be incredibly damning. Problem for Kamala Harris has come up with a dispute over whether or not she ever worked in McDonald's, a claim which Trump and the Republicans are trying to disprove and suggest that Harris is lying. And look, there's no point complaining about the stratospheric hypocrisy of this. I think we just have to accept at this point that democracy is gone. It's withered to dust. It's gone. Just let it go.

Sorry to keep bagging on. Frozen has got into my head, evidently. But it also highlights the difference between the two candidates and the barriers they have to negotiate. That one is trying to prove that she did do something entirely legal, and the other is already found to have done shitloads of things that are very, very illegal. I can't understand how the boomerang of justice is just smashing itself in the face on this one.

Um, if, uh, Harris did not work in McDonald's, it would be quite an odd thing to have made up. If she was 15 years old currently, that's actually quite a cool lie. Right. Okay. Like if she was 15, she came into school and said, guys, I got a job at McDonald's and I can get all the little free winning stickers from the Monopoly game and just you'll have free chips for all of the year. Then honestly, it's worth lying. Yeah, if she did tell that specifically, I think that might swing the election her way to be honest,

if she promised free stickers. If everybody was like, oh, hang on, I might get a cheeseburger that they've kept under the counter. To be fair, that is Elon Musk's tactic, is promising people an entry ticket into a $1 million lottery. Yes. Obviously, it's a slightly troubling site, this Musk giveaway, seeing a deranged gazillionaire trying to buy the election result he wants. I'm sure pretty much the entirety of ancient Athens is giggling in its grave. But yeah, so he's offering $1 million to randomly selected registered voters who've signed a petition in support of first and second amendment rights, which, and those rights essentially

boil down, it often seems to the right to call someone a c*** before shooting them dead, which I'm pretty sure is what Georgie Washtog and the Split Squad intended back in the day. But in some ways, it might be illegal, it might not be illegal, it's certainly legally problematic at worst or best, I'm confused. But is this not one of the most American things in history? Promising randomly selected people a million dollars to sign a petition they may or may not believe in. This is the logical endpoint of American democracy for me.

I can't see where it can go from here. I did see a photograph of the first woman who'd been given it and he hadn't yet launched it. So it really was a surprise ambush lottery. So it's just a woman on stage holding a giant check for a million pounds and Elon Musk thrilled jumping with his hands above his head. That little jump that he's doing, I have it on good authority that he's doing that little slightly awkward looking jump so that he looks like an X in the air.

He did claim on X formerly known as Twitter, formerly known as Twitter, that he shared a post which said that Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Metaformerly Facebook, said that Zuckerberg did the same thing in 2020. This claim would have been true had it been true. Or if he did the same thing, he meant did something demonstrably and obviously different, then that would have been a fair point, I guess. But Zuckerberg's $400 million was not given directly to voters, which is quite a big difference, I think, and was given to non-partisan organizations to help facilitate election logistics.

So it's kind of the same, but not the same in any possible regard. Christopher Columbus news now, and well, scientists' latest sidetrack from the necessary is to have a look at the DNA of Christopher Columbus, aka Chrissie Colon, the controversial mid-second millennium ocean-bothering freelance navigation celeb and brutalities of colonialist exploitation megastar. But they're trying to find out where he was actually from. Who gives a shit? It was ages ago, is the obvious response, but that's the response we're going to try to avoid on this esteemed newscast.

It's always been assumed that he was from Genoa. But I mean, could this change history if we find out that he was from Genoa. Could this change history if we find out that he was, in fact, I don't know, from Tunbridge Wells or maybe Johannesburg? I mean, it could change our whole conception of human history. Well, they can't trace him back. They don't know where he's come from. His origins are lost in the mists of time, like the battle between werewolves and vampires. This, Andy, is why we shouldn't let people of humble origins become famous. We should stick to Nippo babies because their parents are

keeping meticulous track of their early lives for the record books, certain that they'll be able to achieve whatever they desire. You just have to commit to only making already rich people famous. A lot of what Columbus was doing was trying to make rich and famous people even richer and more famous. He was just doing it for them. Can I say though, now his DNA has been put on file, what's happened is that the American police have been able to link him to a number of historical crimes.

If anything, the American police, they're saying that he's patient zero of all crimes in America. I'll tell you another funny thing. He's got his results back. You're not going to believe this. Part Cherokee.

So many Americans get it, don't they? It's a sort of a dystopian thing, of course, because once they fully mapped the Columbus genome, they go to launch an island full of Columbus's, cloned Columbus's. Don't worry, they can't breed. They're all female. You should be able to visit and see how it goes. Well, it's very important to know more about historical figures like Christopher Columbus. So we present to you now the bugle Christopher Columbus Fact Box.

As well as his well-known non-discovery of the United States of America, Christopher Columbus also discovered the cubic centimeter, which by good fortune happened to coincide with his initials, which he used to name the unit after himself. Known in other countries as Cristobal Colon, Columbus developed the colonoscopy and invented the semicolon, a new piece of punctuation dedicated to his out-of-wedlock son, Ferdy. Also, and this is a little-known fact about the disease-spreading resources never, the famous TV detective Colombo took his catchphrase,

Just One More Thing, from Christopher Columbus's habit of taking Just One More Thing from wherever he happened to have landed when it seemed like he'd done all his pillaging and was about to leave. Christopher Columbus in all did four tours of the Caribbean. That's as many as the great Indian cricketer, Rahul Dravid, managed in his test career by coincidence, although Dravid left considerably less humanitarian mayhem in his wake, accumulating runs with characteristically calm precision, built on a flawless defensive technique and festooned

with elegant attacking strokes when the opportunity arose, in sharp contrast to Christopher Columbus's MO of murder, violence and slavery. The differences between Columbus and Rahul Dravid do not end there, however, with Dravid being a universally admired figure in the cricketing world, whilst Columbus has seen his reputation tarnished by things like the things he did and their long-term repercussions. Also, Rahul Dravid twice scored three Test Hundreds in a series in England, which Columbus never even came close to. Those are your Christopher Columbus facts. Australia News and King Charles has gone to Australia as head of state and resigned.

Sorry, where's the rest of the sentence gone? Sorry, let me just find it. Reside himself to the idea that Australia should be in charge of its own destiny and make its own decision about whether he should remain official Charles in charge or whether Australia should pick its own Charles to be in charge. Alice, you must be so excited by the Royal trip to your homeland. I am so excited by the permission that he's given us to do the thing that we were always allowed to do. I don't know if you've heard, but people have always had the right to guillotine their leaders or even just tell them to go fuck off. It's sort of the nature of leading

a whole bunch of people. Hang on. I actually think this will be news to the British who, I think, are convinced that they have to bow down and lick the boots of those in charge. This is going to be big news. Look, it's a complicated situation in Australia. Australians love the Royals. We just adore them, but we also don't really want to be a monarchy. Does that make sense? It's like, they're so great. They're just so monarchy, but the monarchy chemistry just isn't there anymore. Why don't we just be amiable co-parents and best friends who go on holidays together, but also we've grown apart as people and as lovers and maybe we'd like to see different heads of

state, please. But we'll buy the tea towels. We absolutely will buy the tea towels with your faces on them. This is, I mean, the whole future of the Australian tea towel industry really relies on what happens with the monarchy. It was 25 years ago, the last referendum and KC3, King Chuckie Trebles, his royal highness. Highness is for queens, isn't it? Highness is for kings, I think. I forget. He's in Australia, accompanied by his longtime squeeze, Queen, not the actual Queen, but so weirdly, apparently officially Queen Camilla. Josie, I mean, we've, obviously, the monarchy in the United Kingdom goes back to I think 13 billion BC when God appointed the first

molecule as official king of all the Britons. And you know, we've retained the monarchy. Known as a monocule, actually. We've retained the monarchy. Ever since, you do look jealously at Australia as a country that might at some point in the next 100 years move on. You know me, Andy. I'm a staunch royalist.

Absolutely bloody love them. Can't get enough of them. I think it's one of those things where the utter absurdity of the situation is often kind of put on the back burner because it is the way it is. So when I was watching the news about this, I watched the head of the campaign group, Group Republic in Australia, just very calmly going through it. And he said, well, to be head of state, you normally need three things. The first of those is you should be from that state.

And just hearing that, like, yeah, I guess having a head of state who lives so far away, Like, yeah, I guess having a head of state who lives so far away, he needs a stopover to get to the place. Doesn't feel that authentic or reasonable. Also, for me, what would be so glorious if they were to get rid of the monarchy would be the piss that would be boiled. The monarchist, the people who love the monarchy are without doubt the saddest fucks to walk this earth. And I would love to see them sad. And it's one of the reasons why, despite the fact that I know she herself was in

and of the establishment, it's one of the reasons why I do love and kind of semi-deaf I Princess Diana because the idea that she annoyed those people to that extent. Do you know something fun? I'm doing some research about Princess Diana for something else, not anything weird, just normal amount. And I found out that there was a Princess Diana lookalike contest in 1985. And I got really excited. Um, it was in Montreal and I got really excited because I was like, what day is that going to be on? Obviously it's going to be on Saturday because the French for Saturday is same day, Saturday. So excited about this.

It was on a Thursday. Vendredi. Doesn't even work as a pun. Yes. The last referendum, Alice, was a millennium ago, but in 1999, which is 25 years ago, is the time traveling crow flies backwards. It was a 55-45 win to keep the British monarch It was a 55-45 win to keep the British monarch as head of state for Australia to retain that umbilical founding link to the glories of medieval European feudalism, which is not something you want to snip off in a hurry in the 20th century. But I guess the benefit of having a monarch from outside the country is to avoid having to choose an actual Australian as actual head of state with some actual shit to do, which would be quite a tough choice, I guess. Yeah.

Well, I mean, we have such visceral cultural cringe about our own productions that I think that's really what won us over in the same way as comedians have to go over to the UK and then Australia will accept them as being semi-decent. I feel like if we're going to have a self-made head of state, an Australian head of state, they'll have to go and do a little bit of rulings, maybe in America. Maybe they could be the mayor of New York or something before they come back and really give it a shot at the big time. It'd be so embarrassing. I just can't imagine us doing any ceremonial stuff that wasn't incredibly embarrassing, like just dangling themselves off a hill's hoist and going around. The things that we've decided are cultural markers of

Australia. If you go back to the 2000s Olympic ceremony, all of those things that we did, it was just some f***ing wig jumping into a billabong holding a jump-up being like, look at me, I'm the jolly swagman king. I can already, like, oh, just keep Charles forever, please. Oh, God. Is there anyone that you would like genuinely, Alice, that you could think of that you think they would be good? Look, I think we'd have to do it as a kind of either a cricketing thing or potentially like a best barbecue thing or just pick a man in stubbies mowing his lawn.

Of course, just recently, Alice, Australia had a referendum and decided it still wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of its indigenous peoples having a non-binding advisory voice sometimes in parliament. Is it ready to risk someone who isn't a blood descendant of William the Conqueror taking over as a non-executive figurehead? That's a huge step, isn't a blood descendant of William the Conqueror taking over as a non-executive figurehead. I mean that's a huge step isn't it? Huge. I mean we will always, always, always if we possibly can, revert to mean that's Australian conservatism and by mean I mean apparently we're reverting the age

of criminal responsibility back to 10 after it briefly jumped up to 12 in the Northern Territory. That's exciting news for Australia. Most developed nations are pushing to raise the relevantly jailable age of children to 14. The country Liberal Party, which is in charge of the Northern Territory, it's in power up the top end, claims that lowering that age to 10 is the key to curbing youth crime, despite the advice of doctors, human rights groups, and indigenous leaders who are suspiciously unified against it. But Andy, look, it's actually a compliment that Australian children are very advanced.

It's a very proud moment for our great nation. Just as it's worth boasting when your child walks or talks early, the court system in the Northern Territory truly believes in the adult level maturity of its 10-year-olds who are causing trouble. I should be specific. It is indigenous 10-year-olds for whatever reason. The Northern Territory delinquent white kids just haven't been considered advanced enough to be jailable in high enough numbers. You can't slam any of them behind bars in their race car pajamas. So we really need to look at closing that gap. It's not that I don't think there are shitty 10 year old children in the world.

There are plenty of shitty 10 year old children. It's just that I don't think, and I'm going out on a limb here. I know. I just don't think any 10 year old should ever be in jail. I wouldn't jail tween Hitler Andy. Zero 10 year olds should be in jail. I reckon you need to be at least bat Mitzvahed to go get into juvie. What do you think? Liquids are evil news now and some surprise news from the National Gallery in London that all liquid is pure evil. It's banned liquids other than baby formula, expressed human milk, and assume human milk just says express milk. I'm going to guess it's from humans rather than

other animals and prescription medicines. Large bags are also evil. They're going to be prohibited. This follows attacks on paintings by protesters who have caused unconscionable damage to some picture frames. So, I mean, this is just another step in the annoying-ification of everyday life in that, you know, just basic things like going to an art gallery now become fucking irritating. You can't even take a flag of mead into our great national institutions anymore. What are we as a nation? What are we?

It's so depressing, Andy. I mean, to make the obvious point, there is one liquid that you can ban which would stop oil protests and that's oil. But more seriously, I reckon we're going to find, you can take prescription medications in, so I reckon you're going to find an angry teen who needs a prescription for three liters of red paint to solve their climate change anxiety before too long. And also, this just seems like such a short-sighted policy because if you're banning people from bringing in liquids outside their bodies, you're

limiting them to only maybe three or four possible liquids that they could be using to express themselves. I tell you what, they may have banned liquids, but they haven't banned gels. And that's a real loophole for the Just Up Oil lads. They're going to be seeing a whole world of slime, gunge, pastes, and that's just the gels. They've not even said a word about gases. You can sneak in a big thing of helium and then make all the sculptures float around, or you can make all the paintings have really high-pitched voices. Do you know what, as well? If they're going to ban liquids from these galleries, I want them to be consistent. And that means

drain the Damien Hirsts. Drain him. I want to see that shark decompose in real time. I mean, we've all seen the film Sharknado. We know quite how dangerous these creatures can be. creatures can be. Snowboarding news now. I'm not sure we've had a snowboarding section before. We've mentioned jet skis in the past, but I'm not sure we've done a lot on snowboarding. Snowboarding has been in the news. Josie, I know you keep an eagle eye on all former Olympic snowboarders to make sure they stay the right side of the law, but you've picked up on one who's failed

to do that. Yeah, very sad. From a community that was already cool, for someone to then become a kingpin of cartels, slow down. There's no need need is what the international snowboarding community has been saying. Ryan Wedding, he's 43. I mean, is he single? We don't know. With a name like that, you'd assume not. Ryan Wedding, in 2002, he was in the Winter Olympics representing Canada.

And since then he's gone off the rails. And the rail, I think is a snowboarding term, that's good. He's gone off the half pipe. Again, I'm not that, it's gnarly. He's become a very prominent drug dealer. And what's funny about it is, I think he must, he's hiding out in Mexico and that must be very sad for him as a snowboarder because he's looking at the hills knowing there's not a fleck of snow up there. He's got all these skills, he can't use them. And what I think he

must be doing is when he has the big drugs meetings, he'll get out all the cocaine, get it all in a big pile and then just kind of smooth it out, get on the board, show him what he can do. If anything, that's why he's so successful. If you can have someone snowboarding along a hundred weight of cocaine, fair play to him. He's the lead suspect among 15 other suspects who are running this cartel. Apparently, he's accused of ordering the murders of three people, including an innocent Ontario couple who were killed in a case of mistaken identity in 2023. That is two out of the three people he's accused of having ordered murdered being

the wrong ones. That is, I feel this is proof if anything that snowboarding isn't a real Olympic sport because that level of attention to detail just would not go in the real Olympics. You need to be on target, you need to be efficient. I guess what this shows is how difficult it can be for former elite sportspeople. When their time comes to move on from sport, how do they replicate the thrill of competition, the excitement of performing in front of a crowd? And Ryan Wedding has obviously decided that the only way to do that is to become involved in one of the world's most destructive industries and leave a trail of human devastation behind him. So, I mean, I guess this in a way replicates that excitement of plummeting down the hill on

a plank of wood at high speeds, but it does seem a bit of a logical leap. It's also a race to the bottom in some ways. You know, if he ever gets caught and he has to make a quick getaway, if he's not at the top of a hill, he's fucked, isn't he? That's it. He'll have the board and he'll be saying to people, look, I'm sorry, I really, I want to run away, but the conditions are terrible here. If he's trying to run away on a flat surface, both of his feet are attached to the board,

so he's just go, hop, hop, hop. That brings us to the end of this week's Bugle. Thank you very much for listening. Sorry we couldn't do a show last week. Sorry this week's show was slightly late. So we'll be back with an actual Bugle in the week beginning the 4th of November. We will hopefully have a sub episode for you next week. Don't forget to buy your tickets, do all of those tour shows, and there will be some extra dates added shortly. Josie, anything to plug? My book still exists and I would love people to buy it. It's called Because I Don't Know What You Mean and What You Don't Mean, Short Stories, and I just am still proud of it and I'll be plugging it until I'm in the ground. Plug from the Beortons, the Beortons the Great or even in the Great.

I have a podcast, it's the Sister Podcast. This podcast is the Glossy Magazine to the Bugles audio newspaper to the visual world and it's called The Gargle and you can find it on all podcast listening devices. I also have a book coming out and the book is called A Passion for Passion and it's available on Unbound.com. It will come out on the 6th of Feb and I'll be doing a book tour around in the UK in February to help promote that. It's a very, very, very silly book. You should read it if you like romance novels or if you have no idea why people read romance

novels. If one of those two people, you should definitely read this book. Also if you want to join my writers meetings, I do two writers meetings a week on Patreon, patreon.com slash Alice Fraser and you can get access to all eight of those writing meetings to a week for a dollar a month, which is deranged. And I really should change that. I think it's very kind and fair. Yeah, yeah. Jack it up in these troubled times, jack it up.

Thank you for listening, Buelus. Until next time, goodbye.