The Bugle - This week's been rough!

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

Andy is joined by Alice Fraser and Nato Green as the they discuss Trump's latest damning tweets, and question if the world is on the brink of nuclear armageddon, they trio also chat about the US/Iran meme wars, the latest on the Artemis II mission to he moon, and Meta finally being held accountable! It's issue number 4374! 🇺🇸 Tweeting Trump: The trio discuss the US president's tweets ahead of a testing 24 hours between USA and Iran! 📱 The Meme Wars: The three delve into the unimaginable war of the memes between Iran and the USA 🌑 The Dark side of the Moon: Andy, Alice and Nato chat about the recent Artemis II mission, as humankind beat their own PB. Andy's Links: andyzaltzman.co.ukAlice Fraser's Links: https://www.patreon.com/AliceFraser Nato Green's Links: https://www.instagram.com/mrnatogreen/?hl=en🎧 Support The Bugle! Become a Team Bugle subscriber for bonus episodes, exclusive video editions, and the righteous satisfaction of funding satire:http://thebuglepodcast.com📺 Watch Realms Unknown on YouTubeProduced by Chris Skinner, Laura Turner and Harry Gordon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, buglers. What you're about to hear was recorded on Tuesday evening UK time, in between the leader of the free world announcing that he would destroy an entire civilization and the same leader of the free world announcing that, nah, he couldn't be asked. Such is the lot of topical news-based audio newspapers for visual worlds. Here is the show recorded, as I said, a few hours before what was at the time the deadline for destruction before Eternal Peace had broken out. The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4,374 of the bugle.

I am Andy Zaltzman. It is the 7th of April, 2026 here in London, in the hearts of British civilization, one of many civilizations, nervously waiting to find out if we're the ones who are going to die tonight, as predicted by the White House Nostradamian. He didn't specify which civilization it's going to be, so we'll just have to wait and see, If you're listening to this, I guess, given the producer Harry will be editing this here in Britain

after the civilisation slaying deadline has passed, will have got away with it, in which case, hello again and welcome to issue 4,374 of the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world. In this week's show, we are spanning a multiplicity of continents, hemispheres, times a day, and likelihoods of being included on the next Artemis mission. I'm in London, where it's 9pm, the witching hour. but don't worry, I've turned the cauldron down low, so the frogs don't interrupt. Before I get in trouble, they are ethical, free-range, heat-proof, ceramic e-frogs. They don't feel a thing.

Joining me from Australia in the East O'Southernick-Demisphere, early in the morning, all the way from tomorrow already, it's Alice Fraser. Hello, Alice. Good morning. Good morning, Andy. Good morning, buglers. How are you all? You can answer asynchronously using your social media of choice if you're the buglers, but Andy, I'm asking directly. I imagine I speak for all bugles when I say that I'm not enjoying this planet as much as I was hoping to in the year 2026.

But, you know, that's, you know, you can't have everything. You can't have everything. How are you enjoying it? Ah, Andy, I'm having, I think, what is in the industry called a shit of a time at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. My venue, I walked in on day one. I said, is there a changing area for me to get into my costume? they looked the kind of upset and confused and offended that people only look when it's never occurred to them that someone doing a show might need to be naked before the show. I mean, when you put it that way, it is weird.

They pointed me to a dark, unlit alcove full of upside-down tables and I went there, slipped my shoes off, immediately stepped on quite a lot of glass. To be fair, that was my fault. I didn't first shine a torch on the ground to check if this is where they stored all of their favorite broken glasses, which apparently it was. Put my shoes on, did the show. As I left was like, oh, by the way, you know, deadly. hazard in that corner. And the next day I came back in and the glass was still there, even the bits with my blood on them, which makes me feel it's also part of some sort of cutting-edge art project to make me quit the incredibly small amount of live comedy I still

attempt to do. And then my children got gastro and my first pass of my fantasy, Borgadet came due. So also my social media assistant is in Tehran. You know, I want to go a full Victorian era, gentlewoman and have a nervous breakdown or, you know, back some of these incompetent locks into a corner explain all of my problems to them in exhaustive detail before aggressively falling asleep. I'm not okay, Andy. I'm not okay. Well, it's okay to not be okay.

It's 2026. Anyone who is okay has not been paying attention. Also joining us from lunchtime in the breakaway republic of NATO Greenia in California. It's NATO Green. Hello, NATO. Hello, Andy. Hello, Alice. Hello, hello buglers.

It's good. seeing you is a shine of light and hope. Even the thought of Alice's bloody feet is better than most of what's on the internet today. I mean, it did make me feel very brave, which was nice. It made your show feel a little bit like a reenactment of a scene from Die Hard. Also, you know, it's Easter. And, you know, in previous Easter's people get in blood all over. over their feet turned out to be a really good career move in terms of long-term profile.

You can always cling to that. Well, so not only is it Easter, but since this is a full member of the Tribe Bugle episode, it's also Passover week. And my Passover... Thanks for the reminder. Yeah. You've done fucked up again, Salts. Do you know where your first board child is right now?

To be honest, I never know with my... So just a week or so ago, as we were starting to prepare for Passover, I was talking to a journalist and who told me that, and I don't know why I've never investigated this before, but the historical basis of the story of Exodus may not comport with what's in the Bible, that the archaeological record, what is known by historians, does not suggest that the slavery and out of slavery, a flight to Canaan story may be slightly blown out of proportion. So there may be nothing more Jewish than having been slightly inconvenienced by the Egyptians and then complaining about it for several thousand years later.

We are recording on the 7th of April, 2026. On this day, in 1795, the French First Republic adopted the kilogram and the gram. as its chosen units of mass. And I would say led directly to the development of nuclear weapons and the world being a complete haulics, exactly 231 years on, mercy beaucoup, France. No one could have designed an intercontinental ballistic missile

or a nuclear warhead if they'd had to work it all out in pounds and ounces, feet and inches, leagues, furlongs, or fathoms, or pints. That is a fact. I blame France. on this day in 1922, well, the teapot dome scandal got into full swing. Albert B.4, the Secretary of the Interior and a cabinet member in the Harding government, took bribes from oil companies and returned for awarding them leases to drill for petroleum without the hassle of going through a public bidding process. I mean, in terms of levels of wrongdoing at the top of American government nature,

that's almost charming, isn't it, looking back now, to the teapot dome scandal and Albert B. Fall? I admit, not a day goes by that I don't miss Albert B. Thaw. It did lead to his name neatly encapsulating the second phase of his political career. It was A, rise, and B fall. The bee ironically stood for bacon. Albert Bacon fall. So perhaps not surprising,

he ended up doing something that was legally not kosher. As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. And as you may have heard on the news, it's just been announced that the 7th of April,

as well as being the anniversary of the French First Republic adopting the kilogram in the gram, has been declared Power Plant Day and Bridge Day by American President Donald Trump. So to mark Power Plant Day, we encourage you beautiful to go and show your local power plants some love. Maybe write it a poem about how important power generation is to you

and how you couldn't live without it. Make your power plant feel special. Many power plants also look quite drab. So we're not treat your local power plant plant by painting one of its cooling towers in fun, bright colors or with a cartoon mural explaining the history of power generation from Watermills to Newky Dookies. If you're going on a date on Power Plant Day, why not go dressed as a power plant, then say to your date, I can feel a real energy between us. Do you want to get into the middle of my chain reaction? If your date leaves immediately,

it wasn't going to work out anyway. Alternatively, build your own model power plants out of leftover, takeaway boxes, uneaten baguettes, a discarded bicycle wheel, fished out of your local caddala, a ballard, and whatever assorted sticks and debris you can find in your local woods. Get creative.

Don't be constrained by what power plants usually look like. And also, for Bridge Day, we are holding a world's best bridges, knockout competition. The names that have just been drawn out of the hat just before we started recording in the first round of the Best Bridges competition. The Golden Gate Bridge,

presumably one of your favourites local to where you or NATO. Love it. Versus Italy's Celebrity Bridge, the Pontovecchio, which has the advantage of experience over the younger Golden Gate Bridge, but not quite the same span. So very much, you know,

could go either way, that one. Tower Bridge, London's best-known bridge, alongside the Zinger Tower Bridge, of course, versus the Bering Land Bridge that once connected Asia to North America, those were the days. The Dan Yang-Kunshan Grand Bridge in China, the world's longest bridge at a cool 102.4 miles

versus the bridge in Carly Ray Jepson's hit single, Call Me Maybe, one of the classic pop bridges. And finally, the Swilkin Bridge, a 30-foot-long stone bridge on the 18th hole at St. Andrews Golf Course, versus Brownian Bridge, a continuous time Gaussian process whose probability distribution is the conditional probability distribution

of a standard winner process. Isn't the internet fun? I would like to note, the longer your intros are, the worse the news is for the week. So let's... You pick that up, have you, Alice, over the years? Trying to avoid something. I'd like to request bugle merch

of just the logo for nuky-dookies? Well, one of our listeners will definitely mock that up for us, so we will post it on our social feeds. Anyway, those sections on as we wait for exactly what happens on Power Plant Day and Bridge Day in the bin. Top story this week. God damn it. Well, to be honest, NATO, if only he did.

If only he did come out and damage, that might actually help. I mean, but he's not. He's kept eerily quiet about it, a god in his once favourite region. I mean, it's been a weird week news-wise. I was looking at the headlines this morning. And one says Trump says whole civilization will die tonight. And another said, Artemis crew returned to Earth, towards Earth, after a record-breaking journey.

And it sort of showed, you know, this is... We're seeing two Americas here at NATO. Good bits and less good bits. Kind of genius and idiocy, which is sort of the story of the history of the USA. How have you enjoyed this week in American history? Oh, Andy, it's been rough. And honestly, I'll be honest,

I feel bad for President Trump. At this point, the Trump presidency is a form of elder abuse. More people have used Weekend at Bernies to describe the Trump administration than saw the movie Weekended Bernies. Have you ever had the experience of waking up from a deep sleep in a different place that's unfamiliar to you? And then you're briefly confused about where you are and what's happening and are terrified. And then you remember where you are and you calm down. And imagine feeling that panic and confusion all the time. I think that's how he feels all the time.

He, like, babbles incoherently, falls asleep in public constantly and is clearly shitting his pants. And I have compassion for people who babbled does off and shit themselves. As my cousin said recently, the fact that the president shits his pants is not what makes him a bad president. It's what makes him funny. And I would take a great president who shits his pants over a bad president who didn't. And as bad as Trump is, the only thing worse than actual Donald Trump. Trump would be a young, healthy, articulate and lucid Donald Trump. When I see a confused senior citizen who can't function or communicate and they're shitting

themselves constantly, I want them to get the best care possible, not to give them the nuclear football. The best thing about Donald Trump, the best thing that can be said about Donald Trump is that he'll be dead soon. And he will be put out of our misery. So as Lindsay Graham said this weekend, if it's not clear to Iran and others by now, that President Trump means what he says. And that's true.

Trump does mean what he says, but it also doesn't mean anything. He's experiencing dementia. People with dementia mean what they say. It's just not related. This is a man who literally on Sunday was ranting about Iran to a life-size Easter bunny on the White House lawn. The fact that he means what he says is possibly the least important thing about him. Like, you know, at the end of my life, my grandfather insists. Not the end of my life.

Let me start over. At the end of his life, my grandfather insisted to me that Pablo Picasso was his boyfriend. He meant what he did. He was just wrong about that. I mean, this incredible truth that truth fulfilled that he just socialed out, I got sent it by a friend and I had to fact check the original source because I couldn't quite believe that it happened, which is extraordinary because I hadn't, I had thought that I wouldn't have believed anything out of scope for these like

shock riding memiticians who are running the current administration. It's sort of the definition of what they do is they sit astride the line of what is plausible, acceptable for public figures to say, and then they shoo-over the cliff edge of normativity into the trench of unacceptable speech until that trench is so full of it, they can walk over the swamp and into new realms of like deranged public behavior. as an act of colonial aggression, it is extraordinary that there is not more pushback from the people whose conversational turf they are encroaching on. If I were a 15-year-old edge lord or a ranting street corner delusioneer, I would feel quite affronted at having my thing mainstreamed like this.

You're wearing a suit. This is the kind of speech that should be reserved for people who are actively frothing at the mouth. It is quite rude to be taking their shtick. How is a manic street preacher to distinguish himself as the true prophet of our dark octopus truck lord when the leader of the free world keep stealing his material. How is a goth teen to express his alienated rage after his mother's divorce if she's read worse than he can produce on the president's Twitter account? I don't know. These are, I mean, as you say, strange times.

I mean, before the whole civilization will die tonight message, earlier in the week, there was the open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards or you'll be living in hell just watch praise be to Allah message, which was. I don't know quite how many mixed messages you can fit into one frugally potty mouth social media post. He should have done end sarcasm. The problem was he didn't do the right array of emojis, really.

Fair to say, it's not the kind of language that would have been used in public by most former presidents, apart from maybe the 45th one. But it's interesting that this is sort of turning some of his erstwhile supporters against him. Tucker Carlson his longtime chief fluffer said, who do you think you are, you're tweeting out the F word on Easter morning. I mean, to be honest, I think

the very first Easter would have seen a fair amount of swearing, such as what the fuck's he got? What the fuck? Marjorie Taylor Green was one of many calling for the 25th Amendment to be 25th amendmentized onto

Trump. She was a former Trump to a geographerist and unhingedness devotee. I mean, one of the weird things, NATO, is, you know, there's this idea that he could be removed by the 25th Amendment still seems a long shot, although some betting prediction markets were saying there's a 39% chance of it happening by the end of his term of office, which I would say is a disappointing 70% to 80% below what it should be.

But I can't think of any other job in which he would not be fired, or at least suspended or quietly reallocated to a less public-facing role and department, just getting to work out his contract doing some Loki back office admin or auditing the stationary supplies or just welcoming people to the building and pointing them towards the cloakroom if they have a bag that needs to. Anything that gets him out of talking out loud. It's disappointing to me, NATO, that America's president is held not to the highest possible standards, but to the lowest possible standards available in the American jobs market. Andy, that just speaks to your lack of optimism,

that you don't believe that America and our can-do attitude cannot come up with lower possible standards. Is it wrong that this story about people calling for the 25th Amendment to be invoked, it makes me want to like sigh in a kind of fond, exasperated way at the people who insist on, you know, this idea of norms and standards. I mean, they're right, obviously, and the inevitability of the current attack on standards

really ought to be halted by decent people. But it does feel a little bit like someone in the British aristocracy stranded on a ship being told that it's been hit by an iceberg made of live sharks dressing for dinner. Oh, it mustn't let standard slip Delilah. He says to his wife as two crew members stab each other in the neck, mid-nialism, death cult orgy outside the porthole.

What's that shark on your leg for, Jeeves? Take it off. It's very unseemly. I just, you know, would that we lived in those more gentle times. I wasn't prepared for the psychological warfare being fought by an animated AI Lego rap disc tracks. But, you know, here we are. There's an AI sloppaganda as act of warfare. We're in it.

What's happening? Just a lie back, I guess. Beth Foucault didn't expect this, is what I'm saying. I didn't, I bet Foucault did not expect this to be the end point for postmodernist art. Well, part of any military conflict is the battle of hearts and minds. And so both sides are trying to meme their way to victory, which raises important questions, which is do survivors of the meme wars get veterans pensions? When they die from being mugged to death, do they get a state burial?

You know, so Trump posted this thing on, on truth social about power plant day and bridge day, just open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards. He posted it on a truth social to which Iran replied, fuck, another thing I have to log into. I just finished created my Blue Sky account. Remind me what's my truth social password again. Iran put out an animated AI,

disc track, rap video with Legos, and it includes an animation of Lego Pete Hegseth vomiting into a toilet, and Lego Donald Trump blowing Lego Bill Clinton, while Iran Bob's the White House. And I think it's incredible, and it's also a cautionary tale of the need to have a qualified human due quality control of AI output. Because some of the lyrics don't make sense.

And I just want to dig into this with you for a moment. Okay. So here's one verse. There's a quick rhyme from the Iran disc track. We take it payback for the girls you broke, the wives you broke, the Muslims you hate, every victim screaming in the dark, Iran got you on the plate. I don't know what that means. I got you on the plate. Is that an expression? I don't know. And then it says, Persians, Persian flow with the wrath. Pete, you done, roasted raw. Iran setting this heat, feel

the math. Feel the math, everybody. Feel the math. Got you on the plate. Feel the math. That's my new catchphrase. Other responses from, well, official Iranian outlets. The Iranian embassy in Zimbabwe, Bobway, responded to, this is genuine, responded to course, to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, or to give it its official, renamed Donald Trump title, The Fucking Straight of Hormuz, responded by just posting, We've lost the keys.

And when Trump announced that the Kabumarama will take place at 8pm Eastern Time, the Iranian embassy in Zimbabwe responded, 8 p.m. is not that good. Could you change it to 1 p.m. or 1 a.m. And, well, this is, is the, I mean, it's interesting that amidst the sort of hyper-technology of modern warfare that we've seen applied in a sort of way, I guess, enables someone like Trump to conduct

war without the need for, almost bravery, but that alongside it, war has never been more childish than it is now. Never has it been more infantile than it is today. I mean, have you read the Iliad? Well, Alice, I did a classics degree. And just in case my former tutors are listening, yes, I did. I definitely read it. I definitely read it all in the original Greek, all of it. I mean, this kind of, this memeification reflects, I think, the most, oddly enough,

on the designers of the social media algorithms. This is, you know, Elon Musk and the four. Or Chan-pilled ilk of people whose unsophisticated, Route 1 understanding of the concept of free speech is to confuse democracy's reliance on freedom of access to information and freedom of speech with the algorithmic avalancheification of anything that gathers any kind of momentum. On the premise that if anything is gathering any kind of organic reach

by being outrageous or provocative, there's a mechanical amplification based on a principle. I think of FOMO, if something exciting is happening, you want as many people to be invited into the party as possible, you were not invited to the parties where interesting things were happening. I think this is built into the algorithms of our distribution mechanisms. And I do think this is the end result. So if you'd been nicer to your nerds in school, this wouldn't have happened, is what I'm saying. Speaking of Andy's classics degree, the internet has reminded me that there's a relevant passage from Herodotus.

that the big age the big age the Oracle of Delphi told the fabulously wealthy King Krosis that if he invaded Persia he would destroy a great empire and Krocheus invaded and lost the empire he destroyed was his own well just goes to show once again

that we will never ever learn from history not only I've come I've had this sort of line in my show for a while about how we'll never learn from history being the only lesson we can learn from history but I think we've gone past that now where we actively ignore history.

It's not just not learning from it. We look at it and we say, we are going to just completely and utterly ignore that. In terms of bombing Iran back to the Stone Age, I mean, the Stone Age was, they haven't been entirely clear what part of the Stone Age, which, according to Wikipedia, lasted about three and a half million years, up to about 2000 BC.

in terms of Trump's grasp of the world, he could not be bombed back to the Stone Age. He would have to be bombed forwards to the Stone Age. But also, is the Stone Age that bad? No social media, no TV news, no fruit-flavored vapes wafting into your face in public? Not all bad. Sure, the interior decorating industry

never got much beyond pictures of fucking Bison. But I'd take that. I'd take that for a more peaceful internet-free world. So, well, here we are. We're now, I think, approximately three and a half hours away from the official launch of power plant and bridge day. It seems to the end of civilization might be just around the corner. NATO, any way that you can cheer me and our listeners up? Well, Andy, no.

But I think a lot about hope, partly because, of, I've spent 30 years as a union organizer. And so I've learned some things about it. And things are bad and things were surrounded by cruelty and stupidity and suffering. And it'll get, it'll get worse. And yet I remain hopeful. And hope isn't about ignoring the horrors of the world. It's not about not feeling the grief and anger and heartbreak and rage. In fact, I think our hope has to be as big as our grief. Hope also doesn't follow from an analysis. It's not like you run the numbers and the data points and the data points to things being hopeful. Hope is a discipline and it has to do with where you put your attention.

And I've learned from organizers through history and other social movements and I know that the basis for hope is always just that the future is unwritten. Things may get matter or may not. We can win. I'm not saying we will win. I'm not making predictions. I'm defining possibility. And hope lives in possibility.

At every moment, there's a range of futures from better to worse, possibility. and they could be drifting in a worse direction overall, but there are still better and worse future outcomes and whether events proceed towards the better or worse of the available futures is up to all of us. And we know that in the past, people who made amazing things happen did not know their own futures.

They decided to act as if success was possible before they knew it was. I've been in so many union campaigns where it felt like we were losing until we won. And, you know, I've, like I said, I've benefited from learning from veterans to other social movements. And one of the things that they taught me was that, you know, for example, closer to home for you, Andy, Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years. And at year 23, people didn't know that they were four years away from ending apartheid.

But they kept fighting. And there are signs of the weakness of this fascist moment and the resistance to it. It's terrifying today to live through war crimes being committed around the world and human rights violations all over. And there are signs everywhere that regular people are stepping up, not elites or institutions, but regular people. We may fail. They may consolidate a fascist regime. They will almost certainly hurt a whole lot more people before it's over. But there are signs of life. And so for me, the discipline of hope is based on the premise that,

People closest to the hurt are closest to the solutions. And if I only watch the news, I feel horrible. But that's why I don't only watch the news. I stay close to the regular people. And again and again, we see that everybody has a red line. And when the government crosses, if they stop caring about the rules, and they're willing to risk everything and decide to do something to make a difference. And so all over America right now, you see people running into harm's way to protect their neighbors from ice agents.

You see people going to Home Depot and carpooling people to work because they're, afraid of being deported on the way to work. You see people filming law enforcement actions, people doing things at incredible risk to themselves. And the movement keeps getting bigger. It keeps getting scarier, but it keeps getting bigger. And the image that keeps me moving forward is this. I have, there's a mental picture, which is before this is over, Trump will try to steal an election. And when he does, it is possible that Americans will do what lots of people have done before and flood the streets and shut everything down and grind the country to a halt until Trump and his gang flees to Russia. And the image of these assholes being forced to get

on a plane or helicopter and flee the country while shi-ing his pants the whole way up the stairs to the plane is what keeps me going. It is not certain, but it is one possible future. And if we all do what needs to be done, it can go from possible to probable. Data, a couple of things on that. one, thank you for bringing some genuine hope to this show. And also, what you described there about how history unfolds, pretty much the way I look at test match cricket. Basically what you described there, NATO, for me, just eerily reminiscent of the 1981 England v Australia test match at Heddingley in Leeds, when England, having followed on in

their second inning seven wickets down, still more than 90 runs behind. somehow inspired by the Leviathan Ian Botham, supported by Graham Dilly, Chris Olden, and then the pyrotechnic bowling of Bob Willis, turned it round into one of the greatest sporting victories of all time. We've been unified by this interpretation of hope, NATO. You have put it in terms that I, as a cricket fan, can understand and relate to, and I thank you for that.

That's what I'm here for, Andy. Almost going to the moon again news now, And the Artemis 2 mission has swung its way around the moon, a slightly disappointing 4,000 miles away, as we discussed. It's just not close enough, to be honest. But it did, as I mentioned at the start of the show, highlight the strange conflict of ages we're living through today, the hyper-tech future-splattering computer wizardrous engineering genius of infinite possibility that enables us to send people around the moon. dancing alongside the sub-medieval level viral mutations of democracy, religion and capitalism that spew out the ethically rancid,

the warmongering, the theocratic and the monarcho despotic to inflict their derangements and spread their misery like snake venom marmalade on a mouldy buttered bat. It's a strange old cocktail and the hangover is going to be fucking awesome. My question about the Artemis crew, having gone around the far side of the moon, and send back some slightly disappointing pictures. I mean, the launch didn't look much different to what it looked like.

I want it to say, I want a higher quality footage. My question, though, is why the fuck have they come back? I mean, why would you? Why would you turn that one rocket around and bring it back to Earth? Just, just stay there. I mean, it's an extraordinary thing, Andy, that we're back. We're back looking at the moon, moon purving. NASA astronauts, Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch,

and it was also Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hanson, the one Hanson brother left out of the popular 90s and early 2000s boy band Hanson Mbop. He's really putting the fourth M, which stands for Moon, into that banger of a tune. They are, I think my favorite quote is from Christina Cox. who's describing seeing the far sight of the moon and the way that the features of the moon are sort of suddenly unfamiliar because they're different with the dips and the dark spots in different places.

And she, a qualified astronaut, incredibly intelligent and accomplished person, said something about you, senses, that is not the moon I'm used to seeing. And I was like, yeah, is it your eyes? Is it your eyes that you've been, you're an astronaut, you've been looking at the moon, presumably for decades at this point,

presumably you've been looking at the moon through a telescope since you were a small child imagining becoming an astronaut. What possible supernatural part of your gut could possibly sense that the other side of the moon is not the side of the moon that you're used to looking at?

I would suggest it's your fucking eyeballs, Christina. Calm down. It was described as absolutely spectacular by the astronauts involved and by NASA. Other reviews, less flattering. looks quite like the rest of the moon

that was sort of one of you that was from me whereas others have said interesting open space some serious advertising and branding opportunities so it'll be interesting to see you know what happens

what happens next the astronauts apparently spent some time drawing sketches and recording their own audio descriptions of what they saw what the fuck is this NASA drawing sketches.

Not a fucking school day out or a team bonding trip. This is vitally important distractive propaganda from all the shit that's going on on the surface of the world. Also, it's throwing some unnecessary variables

into the mission. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6. Mission a ball. I forgot my pencil. I forgot my pencil. And Jeremy's in a salt because he didn't get a chocky-picky in his pack lunch.

My daughter spent yesterday in a cafe during the jazz music that the cafe happened to be playing and I was like, she is so clever and fun, but she's also for... The audio descriptions, presumably, were long lines of, it's big, off white and round,

because it didn't believe looks a bit dull to be aged, I reckon we could have taken a fucking guess of that all this palaver and expenditure. But look, I mean, I'm quite literally on board with this. Not literally. I'm quite literally. on board. The world needs more

completely pointless but brilliant achievements whether they're technological, astronomical, mupportational, whatever. What of sporting, animal acrobatic, I mean, which would you rather watch Donald Trump tantrumming thousands of people to death or a polar bear doing a triple twisting pipeback somersault? Or a rocket going to the moon. I think the world has its answers.

And also I think it is nice to have the kind of human reaction because otherwise you could just send a drone around to have a purve at the back side of the moon. What you really want to be recording is kind of human emotional reaction to such a profound kind of experience, even though the kind of emphasis on covering this from every possible interpretive angle does remind me of like when my dad would take us to the zoo. And because zoo tickets were quite expensive, he would like insist that we were having fun long after we had stopped having fun.

Also, I was slightly disappointed that they missed the chance to play one of the great pranks and pretend that the far side of the moon was absolutely loaded with, hundreds of thousands of slimy green creatures waiting to spring into action or even an aging Elvis Presley brushing moon dust off his shoes. I thought you were going to say that they were going to prank it by putting their butts onto the window to moon the moon. They must have there. There were 40 minutes where we don't know what they were doing because they were out. And it is impossible to believe that four people did not one of them must have done that NATO. who it was, that's not for us to say.

That's, yeah, I mean, it's just, it's very, or at least say, signs of disturbed surface likely from where a Soviet dog buried a bone. Out of, I'd have, like, just something along those lines. They went around the back of the moon and lost contact with Earth for 40 minutes, and the lengths some people will go to get a break from the news. Yeah, that was, yeah. The best 40 minutes of their lives. for so many reasons.

And finally, some tech news. Apparently, the era of big tech invincibility is over. That, I don't believe, but, you know, it's a nice thing to read. Alice. On the big tech eviscerating the very concept of the human soul over the last 10 years or so on the view. What's the latest? Well, plaintiff lawyers in the US are cracking their knuckles because there has finally at last, at last been a judgment against meta and YouTube.

It's only to the tune of about $6 million, but a young person has brought a claim that these companies deliberately addicted her to social media and it's basically ruined her life. And they took it to court and said that, no, of course they haven't done that. And then, of course, documents came out saying things like, oh, we'd better addict them young so they stay addicted forever. and let's deliberately make this more addictive for young people, particularly when their vulnerable young minds are really open to being addicted to stuff. So it was a pretty open and shut case,

even though they came in with the full bore of their big lawyers. And I think it is a genuinely wonderful and beautiful thing to be reminded even in this small way that these companies are subject to regulation, that it is possible for you to have a judgment against them, that the inevitability of the dominance and the inevitability of the degradation, of the human experience by virtue of this like, oh, our hands are tied, the market demands that we invented an Uber desperation score

where the longer it is since your last ride, the less they charge you for the next, you get for the next ride. Like all of that stuff is being presented to us as sort of the inevitable consequence of the demands of whatever capitalism or the market or, you know, advertising space or whatever it happens to be.

And actually it's decisions that are made by people and those people can be held to account. And if, for example, they get the fuck sued out of them every time your teenager fails maths, I highly recommend we all have a go. The only thing they can do to protect themselves at this point is turn up the dial on addictiveness so much that people can't get their shit together to sue them.

And they will try that. We keep struggling with the question of how to regulate the internet. And I have a very simple solution that I think would be 100% effective, which is that I think people post all the nonsense they post every day on every platform. But that each day, on each platform, someone is randomly selected to have to say what they said to someone else's face and then get punt. I am not a violent person, but the internet has taught me that the possibility of getting

punched in the face because you said something awful to somebody is an essential ingredient to a functioning society and we've lost it. I don't claim to know the exact number of people. like how many times per day this needs to happen in order to cure the behavior. I think we need to do some classic tech, A, B testing and evaluate the data. But then, you know, it's like, where's Jeff today? Well, he called someone a soy boy libtart on Instagram and they showed up at his job at the Chevrolet dealership and gave him a bloody nose.

I think that's how we get, how we fix technology. I think we need a number of sort of technology-based holidays in the world. I think we should have one day where everyone in your close inner circle, gets to take over your algorithm, recommend you insideful, pithy short clips by psychiatrists that they think that you really ought to see. I think that should be one day of the year

where all of a sudden you're getting, you know, short clips about narcissism or whatever. And then you have to reckon with yourself. And I think there should be also one day where you just get swapped someone else's algorithm just for the day at random. That'd be fun. I was years ago,

ago, a Guardian reporter used me for an experiment like that, where they switched like a liberal and a conservative, and they made my Facebook feed a conservative news feed. And sure enough, I stopped looking at the internet. And my life got better if I had to see things that didn't confirm all my priors and agitate all my preconceived biases. For all the latest from the world of tech, listen to The Gargle, the Bugles' sister publication. Relaunched recently, Alice, as, well, more specifically, a sort of science and tech-based magazine. Yes, it used to be all of the news, none of the politics, but unfortunately, the science and technology part that was our lead stories became increasingly political and became sort of

impossible to dodge talking about politics when you talk about technology and science. but it is now out. It's every fortnight and alternating weeks with Realms Unknown, which is also the sister podcast, twin sister podcasts, at light and dark, sun and moon, yin and yang. We sit alongside the bugle in supportive roles like Huguen and Moonen on Odin's shoulders. That's us.

Well, thank you for listening, buglers. Let's hope that next week we have some happier news for you. our NATO's little blast of optimism will have borne some fruit do join us next week where Sarah Barron and Anuvab Powell will be

looking at the well the aftermath of power plant and bridge day do come to my remaining tour shows dates and details at andesaltman.com. UK do go and see Alice Fraser Bloodfoot

at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. What are the full details of that, Alice? It's at 6pm every night, except 5pm on Sundays, and it's at the House of Maximon on Cause Lane. It's incredibly difficult to find, and there's nowhere to hang out. You just have to loiter an alleyway until you come and watch me do my show into what feels like a police interrogation. It's a lot of fun, the show. I really enjoy it. It's a passion for passion. It's a delight of a show full of great pleasure, and you get a reading list afterwards. so, you know, if you enjoy comedy that has footnotes, come see me.

Bloody footnotes. Anything to plug, no-ho? I will be joining the tour. There's a tour in San Francisco later in April called The Muslims Are Coming that I'll be popping into. And mostly not much to plug because I will have lots of things to plug very soon because we're deep in editing my next album and book. So if you watch my socials, there's forthcoming Uvra for you. Thank you for listening, Buglers.

Have a fantastic week. Hello, I am Andy Zaltzman, as you may know. The Bugle, as well as being the world's only ever, longest-running and arguably best audio newspaper for a visual world is one of the very few fully independent media empires remaining in this thus far very silly millennium. Our voluntary subscribing listeners have made this possible, and you, if you are not already one,

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