The Bugle - Too Much News - Bonus Edition

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

There has been so much news lately that we've had to hold back on some killer stories, so here they are - from Matcha chaos, to Jeff Bezos's wedding to female religious leaders.Andy is with: Tiff Stevenson, Hari Kondabolu, Felicity Ward, Neil Delamere, Alice Fraser, Tom Ballard and James Nokise.Produced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner🎧 Support The Bugle! Get bonus episodes, exclusive videos, and a Team Bugle subscription at thebuglepodcast.com📺 Watch our visual fantasy-comedy show Realms Unknown on YouTube. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Buglers, welcome to Bugle issue 4,345 sub-episode A for, as I said last week, there is no new show this week. Instead, we have some choice offcuts from recent Bugles which you can listen to whilst booking tickets to my forthcoming show at the Froome Festival on Monday the 7th of July. Also new tour dates are coming soon for 2026. Anyway there's been so much news happening lately that we've held some stuff back especially for a week like this when it's probably a bit more healthy for everyone to think about news that's already happened the

news that is actually currently happening. First up, I spoke with Tiff Stevenson and Hari Kondabolu about shock horror, a possible female archbishop. Well, well, a job that, well, both of you might be interested in, actually, Hari, with your your past in the in the world of work, helping refugees, an Iranian-born refugee could be becoming the first female Archbishop of Canterbury in one of the most exciting job openings currently on the market.

This follows the resignation of Justin Welby, who announced in January that he was handing in his badge, gun, chasable mitre, light saber, and infl inflatable cross and resigning as head of the Church of England. And the current front runner is the Bishop of Chelmsford, Julie Francis De Carney, who was born in Iran and came here as a child when her family had to leave Iran. And so this is the chance to be the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, started with St Augustine back in the year 597 via the 1170 assassination victim of the year, Thomas Beckett, who sneaked in to pinch that title on the 29th of December, four days after

Christmas, disappointing time to be assassinated, barely had time to play with his presence. But you can't assassinate Archbishop anymore because of the work. But anyway, it's a huge call for the Church of England. It would be a massive step to have a female archbishop of Canada. Particularly bear in mind the origin story of the Church of England, which snapped off from the Catholic Church back in whenever it was ages ago. That had something to do with Henry VIII wanting to get his end away without being struck down by an unimpressed God or something. So, you know, there it is. It's a huge opportunity for someone or either of you contemplating throwing your hats into the ring.

I think it's exciting that it's going to be a woman. I know people say it's positive discrimination gone mad, but I just think a woman's less likely to cover up all the sex crimes. So I think it's a smart play from now. So I don't know if you're aware, Hari, but that is part of the reason the previous Archbishop of Canterbury had to step down. So I just think more women in positions of power everywhere. I mean, to be Archbishop, you have to, there's rules to a candidacy, like for you to be able to be the new Archbishop, you have to, there's rules to a candidacy, like for you to be able to be the new Archbishop, you have to be at least 30 years old,

but they're generally younger than 70, and you must only move diagonally. I was excited. I mean, I would be excited if this was for the Archbishop of Cadbury. Then I would be so I would be delighted. I love I'm not exactly sure what religion that would be. Would that be Christianity or why do they have the chocolate eggs? I guess that's the question. Right.

I think I think the religion would be pre menstrual, which is when I get my desperate need for chocolate. So I think the religion would be pre-menstrual, which is when I get my desperate need for chocolate. So I think, but I think, I think the Archbishop of Cadbury's would be a great, would be a great title to have. If you get everything in chocolate, like you say, Andy, the scepter, the what do you get? If it was all chocolate and part of the being sworn in, I don't know if you get sworn in, the church doesn't prove the swearing, but part of you being, I was going to say indoctrinated,

that's probably the wrong word as well. Anyway, sworn in, yeah. Part of it is you get the hat and then you get to eat the hat and then you get a sword or you can eat it all. You should be able to eat it all. Every day you'd get a new hat and a new scepter, every day. Yeah, but the difference is in the Church of England and the Catholics, they can't agree on whether the hat is actually the genuine hat of Jesus or just a symbolic hat of Jesus, but I guess

that's, you know, the same old arguments over and over again. I mean, the whole origin, as I said, it was a philosophical, otheological difference between Rome and London over whether or not Jesus was a British carpenter who could do your cupboard sometime next month. We'll get back to you on exactly when as soon as he can. And we've been split for 500 years ever since. But interesting that archivists were chumps with an Essex. And you think of the great Essex based leaders, Graham Gooch, formerly in cricket captain,

Alistair Cook, formerly in cricket captain, Johnny Douglas, formerly, I'm out after that. I'm absolutely out. She's the front runner, apparently, according to Ladbrokes, which I think is, how addicted to gambling do you have to be to bet on that? Oh, we can bet on anything here. And also people in government have tried to when it's outcomes of who's going to be voted in government. So that's a problem. Yeah, you can vote on the new, you can gamble on the not vote, but you can gamble on who

the new Doctor Who would be. Oh my God. What the Brexit result would be. It's like we're a nation and we're obsessed. You can still gamble on that actually, but because that's still seems to be up in the air with some of our newspapers. Well, I mean, Tiff, this kind of outlandish theory that the world would be better if women were in all positions of power.

I do think that it's definitely worth giving that a go for maybe, and how long has the patriarchy had, what, I don't know, what, should we say, what, 10, 80,000 years or so? So maybe... Yeah, you've had a run, you've had a good run. Six months off, and see how it goes. Yes, leave a mess and then say clear that up. Right. And then when we haven't done it within five minutes, you know, when it's not done quickly enough that you can then blame us for causing the mess. That happens quite a lot. Yeah. You know, but listen, if you want an example, I only found this out the other day.

So so apparently Waterloo Bridge, which I only found out recently, was built by women during the war. And it's the only bridge on the River Thames that went up in time and on budget. All women and all female war effort is the best, most concise, effective, budget-friendly version of a bridge that's gone up. And you compare that with an all-male infrastructure project, Stonehenge, still not finished in about 5,000 years. Moving on, flying dark news now, as if rogue kangaroos causing apocalyptic mayhem across

the length and breadth of the contiguous USA. Sorry, it's the age of exaggeration, what can I do? Also traditionally neutral Switzerland has been infested with law-reverse wildfowl flying at quite literally lightning speed, if it's one of those slower bits of lightning that waddles down from the clouds at the speed of an unusually perky duck. A duck in Switzerland has fell foul of police speed cameras when it was clocked going 52 kilometers an hour in a 30 zone, perhaps by coincidence the same camera that caught the duck going way too quick, also snapped a French chef on a

bicycle with a carving knife and a string of oranges around his neck and hopped his cube. Again this is very very worrying even though the repercussions of this story obviously will not echo around the world but it's you know what I mean if ducks are not respecting the speed limits in Switzerland, where for where for civilization now? Quarter in a 52 in a 30. I mean, but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably speeding. The main thing is they're saying that they think it's the same duck.

Yes, they got the same duck. But I don't believe it's the same. It hasn't aged a day. What's this duck's beauty regie? It must be swimming in all that algae. Like, I don't know, this duck looks snatched. Jawline's looking good, the beak's looking shiny. I don't believe it's the same duck. Tiff Stevenson and Hari Kondabolu there. Next up we have James Nikise in Felicity Ward celebrating the King's Birthday New Zealand edition. Obviously, the biggest news in New Zealand, James, is that it is the King's birthday in New Zealand, but not actually anywhere else. The King's actual birthday is the 14th of November 1948, that's when

he was born, which I think makes him a Valentine's baby. But look, I don't think about that too much, it's not our business. But it's his official birthday in New Zealand this coming Monday, is that right? We go with the first Monday of June so that we always remember when the white weather comes, we celebrate the white ruler. That's the normal state of play in New Zealand. normal state of play in New Zealand. So as it gets cold and we cover up, we think of England. We go, oh, it's chilly here. If only we had central heating like they do in the UK. But we don't because we're too tough. We're too tough in New Zealand. If we get central heating, the All Blacks will never win a World Cup again. That's right. You don't need that reading when you just huddle together in masses of 16 people sort of fighting.

The official birthday is quite an interesting tradition that, like I say, the monarchs have their own birthday when they were actually born. But there is an official birthday that's different in different countries of the of the Commonwealth. In the UK, it's a Saturday in mid-June, so it's the 14th this year. New Zealand, as you mentioned, the first Monday in June. Canada, it's Victoria Day, which is the last Monday before the 25th of May, because that coined Victoria's birthday. She was born on May the 24th

of 1819, so someone's mummy and daddy got very excited by the result the August 1818 general election. In Australia it's mostly the second Monday in June but Western Australia and Queensland can't be arsed with that so they give the King a birthday later in the year, whatever they can be arsed. But the whole idea of an official birthday as well as an actual, I mean it wouldn't be a monarchy if it didn't have completely f***ing ridiculous traditions that if you suggested we're introduced now, you would be politely invited never to share your thoughts and opinions in public with anyone ever again. Felicity, I mean, you grew up in Australia, you live in the UK now, so you get to celebrate two official monarchs' birthdays. That must be

very exciting for you. It is. Look, I would say one of the best things about living over here is having a working knowledge of holidays from Australia, but having them surprise me every year. I can't tell you, I've missed mother's days, father's days. The fucking end of financial year is a different date.

It is, I am constantly jet lagged. I am too early or too late for everything. Any event, I am two months ahead or two years behind. Just look at how much tax I owe the HMRC. My interest rates on penalties through the roof. I just thought I put 200 pounds to the HMRC every month just because I know I'm going to be late. I mean, look, there's some also some deciding factors like I'm fucking disorganized, but everyone you're like now, it's now for anything.

Along with the official birthday comes the birthday honours list, which sees people rewarded for a range of activities with honours ranging from CBEs to knighthoods. They can be rewarded for, for example, decades of selfless, unseen public service and or charitable work or for being good at sports or for being good at being famous or for being rich or for being good at knowing people who are rich or for conquering a foreign land

and naming it in honor of the sovereign, which is not as easy as it once was, sadly. So do keep an eye out to see if you've made it onto the list this year. Michelle, you must be very close-fisted. I'm very disappointed. Yeah. Yeah, I look very disappointed. I've half of London and still I get no CPE for the charity work that I have done.

Probably. Sorry. That's why I had to leave. I had to. I heard the wave was coming. I heard the wave was coming and I was like, I got to get out of my suburb. That's right, you're in the firing line, James. Yeah. How close to Brixton? I got to go. Sorry, I just thought that would embarrass everyone and it did. My work here is done. Right, shall we do American news now?

Alice Fraser and Neil Delamere joined me just a couple of weeks ago and we failed to reveal any medical news. So instead, here it is now. Medical breakthrough news now and medical science, that perennial foe of the will of God, scourge of the undertaking industry's profit margins, bringer of hope in a world of furious darkness, keeps coming up with the goods. It's come so far in the last 250 years medical science and now potentially definitive breakthroughs in the battles against Parkinson's disease and HIV. Let's start with Parkinson's history has proved over and over again how the pen

is mightier than the sword is perhaps the most factually incorrect claim ever made and that is a highly contested title these days. But thanks to science, that much maligned niche hobby of the increasingly marginalized boffin community, a new type of pen could be much, much better than any sword for one specific activity. And that activity is diagnosing Parkinson's disease, which is do not use swords for that,

or indeed any other form of diagnosis. Now anyone who's personal or family experience of Parkinson's, which affected my father for many years, will know what an absolute remorseless, hope-stripping shitbag of a disease it is. This pen can, it is hope, help capture signs of Parkinson's based on hand movements during writing and early diagnosis could help with treatment and quality of life. And look, I mean, there's so much to be kind of upset and pessimistic about in the world, but medical science seems to be one of the few areas, despite the assault on science from certain high profile regimes, that keeps us generally with a sense of human progress on the go.

Of course handwriting can be used to diagnose other medical conditions including megalomania. If you lock a suspected sufferer of megalomania in a room with just a pencil and paper, they are very likely to draw a picture of themselves on a horse in the form of a heroic equestrian statue. That is generally 100% accurate diagnosis. And vertigo, if left on a high ledge with a notepad and pen and told only to communicate via the written words, vertigo sufferers are significantly more likely than others to write, please help me get down.

So it's good to know that pens and paper, the traditional technology that I stand by in my cricket stats work still have other benefits. Also in medical breakthrough news, a possible breakthrough in the search for a cure for HIV, researchers, to explain it simply, researchers showed for the first time that mRNA can be blasted into cells where HIV is, like the deceitful loser that it is, hiding. The mRNA is encased in a specially formulated fat bubble, too small for the human eye to see without the use of artificial seeing small stuff equipment. The mRNA then instructs the cells to reveal the virus at gunpoint, presumably. The cowering

cells then Judas up the HIV virus, which is bundled into the back of a van and taken back to HQ to be viciously interrogated and then covertly slain. So I hope I've explained the medical science of it there. It was like being dropped into the middle of an episode of Grey's Anatomy, it was just amazing. They created a new lipid nanoparticle that would bring mRNA into cells and then it can tell the cell to show up to HIV within the cell. They've created a new type of fat bubble and the fat bubble eventually could cure HIV. A fat bubble. Science laughed at me when I put sausages in the soda stream. They laughed at me. They said the world wasn't ready for carbonated lard Neil. That's what they said, but they were wrong.

I walked so the people at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity could run my friends. And I think we all know that the R there in Peter's doing a lot of work because the Pete Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. It's an entirely different organization. So it looks like, listen, we don't know how much the progress is going to be over in this over the next few years, but they seem extremely excited by the results. And one of the questions for the future apparently though is, do you have to completely wipe out the reservoir of HIV in the body to cure somebody or can even a trace of it repropagate in an area like

Japanese knotweed or hipsters and will they just come back? But either way, good news guys, come on. It's amazing. Well, now if you combine this treatment with the currently existing treatments that are available, I think this is like, this could be it. This could be it. This could be the end of all of those 90s scare ads. They could put the nightmares of a generation to sleep

and pave the way for a lot of people to stop using condoms and get all the other STDs. Whoop, whoop, whoop. The report was several hundred pays of medical and scientific jargon that I found very hard to understand, but it did culminate in the words, seriously, just trust us on this one. I don't care what you read on the internet, on the internet chat room. We are genuine scientists. We know what we're doing.

But whether that's enough to win over the skeptics remains to be seen. Tea news now, and well it's well known that drinking a good cup of tea is one of the greatest pleasures in life. It communes you with your fellow humans across the millennia, bound by a timeless love of steeping plant matter in water and sipping its wondrous concoctions whilst contemplating the nature of existence, or just because you needed bracing pick me up whilst falling asleep whilst recording a podcast. I'm absolutely on it. Alice, you are one of the world's leading bridges between humanity and the tea community. It's been a strange relationship for some literally strange relationship for quite a long time. Bring us up to date with the latest, the latest awkwardness between humans and tea.

Yes, Andy, it is all on apparently matcha stocks are running low. Tea is a calming beverage ev evocative of ritual, mood boosting. It has calming L-theanine in order to keep you chill. And Uji Japan, which is the historic matcha capital, is facing a soaring demand from a terrifying coalition of morning routine slimfluencers, alphabro health optimizers, and image conscious obsessives. So much so that the call for the

extremely rare ceremonial grade matcha powder is outstripping its supply. So if you like matcha, which is the powdered green tea, it's grown in the shade, the ceremonial grade is the fanciest matcha, but the people who are scrambling for top notch matcha are using it in frappuccinos or matcha lattes. And it's causing great concern among the local community who are now changing the motto for Uji, which is come for the tea, leave with a black eye from a fist fight over the tea.

The ceremonial grade matcha is the thing that's being sort of snaffled up. It's shade grown, it's stone-ground. Each tin requires eight hours of grinding to make. Someone call Sting! That was a joke about Sting. Well, it's always nice to leave a podcast with a Sting in the title. I do think we can connect this to a previous story though.

We think that sinking cities is necessarily a bad thing. If Uji, the Machia Capital of the world, sinks into the sea, but then we can figure out a way to just raise it back up out of the sea and then back into the sea again. Think how lovely the sea around that area will be. Nom nom nom. Well. And finally in this week's sub-episode Tom Ballard and Tiff Stevenson joined me to have a good old gawp at Jeff Bezos.

In other rich, powerful men showing off news, Jeff Bezos, a man with so much more money than sense that he could pay himself $2 billion a year to be an idiot for 100 years and still have more than $20 billion left over to be a with. He is incurred the wrath of the people of Venice by deciding to get married in the majestically canaled Italian city. Bezos and his partner Lauren Sanchez will be exchanging their let's be realistic. We can't call them vows. We cannot call them vows. That's just ephemerals. I'm not sure even that is appropriate. But anyway, they're technically- I think they're signing a contract, a zero hour contract with each other. Yeah.

Yeah, zero hours referring to the amount of time that people as rich as Bezos generally like to spend with their actual spouses. But he's, and it's been seen as a further example of the sort of excesses of of tourism and the negative impact they can have on historic cities like Venice, which to be fair does bring it upon itself by being absolutely incredible. And there's there's other cities that have set an example to Venice and haven't become the tourist hotspots. Not Birmingham, for example. Birmingham has more, more mileage of canal than Venice, but has cleverly not made itself so attractive to tourists.

So maybe that should be a lesson for Venice to learn. I mean, Tom, have either of you been invited to the happy occasion? I'm still waiting. I'm still waiting for my invited to the happy occasion? I'm still waiting. I'm still waiting for my invite to the wedding. But to defend them ever so slightly, there's been a campaign against Bezov's having his wedding there and saying, this area has long suffered from the effects of excessive tourism.

It's turned into a playground for the rich. And I think it's quite funny that the Italians are like, Venice is not a playground for the super rich when historically that's pretty much what it has always been, or at least since the 12th century, when it was seen as the richest and most powerful center of Europe. Like, are we now pretending that Venice is a plucky little upstart? People here are just trying to live their lives, gondolering to work every day, barely able to eat an ice cream without someone bursting into a chorus of just one cornetto. I mean, you can be against the people who are having their wedding there, but they're

doing a European wedding. And in America, this is seen as a battle of old money versus new, because Soros is getting married as well. And I think he's getting married in California, whereas the new money, Bezos and Lauren Sanchez are getting married in Venice, and she had her hen do in Paris, Lauren Sanchez. Well, they say she had her hen do, but we know what actually happened.

She had her hen do in space a couple of months ago, because Blue Origin, that flight was definitely her hen do, because they had their makeup done before they went up there. There were terrible karaoke renditions in space courtesy of Katy Perry. It was definitely a hen do because they had penis shaped party favors. That was the rocket. The guest list is pretty impressive.

You got Kim Kardashian, Oprah Winfrey, Ivanka Trump and Leonardo DiCaprio, which I was thought was very surprising. Leo doesn't really like entering anything that's older than 25. So it's weird for him to be, that he'll be heading to the very old city of Venice. Do you get that one, Andy? Family show, Tom, family show. I'm totally on board the broader anti-tourism movement across Europe, though. I think this is fantastic. I'm against all the isms.

I'm against racism, sexism, and I think tourism is the worst of all. OK, there is no room for tourism. We can stand against it. I mean, I think the anti-tourism movement across Europe could be a great way to find a sensible compromise to the toxic immigration debate. We should absolutely welcome immigrants, people who move to our countries to build a new life for them and their families. Thumbs up.

Let's stop hating immigrants. Start hating tourists. Stop xenophobia. Start tourismophobia. Okay. These weirdos in their Hawaiian t-shirts and their big maps. Get the fuck out of here. And the great thing about this is that when you tell the tourists to go back to where they came from, they do. Everybody's happy. Just as in me in Australia, I was drinking coconut water out of an actual coconut, wearing big heart-shaped sunglasses. I mean, what an absolute sight. But they're calling it touristification, which is a great word.

And apparently cities where holidaymakers can expect disruption include Barcelona, the Pyrenees, Mallorca, Venice, Valencia, Naples, Palermo. Anyway, look, this all sounds good and I love a protest, so I'm going to make that my holiday. So I'll just pop on a bikini and join in like a go-home tourist while eating a Clippo. That will be really good fun for me. Get out foreign scum. I'll be shouting in my Union Jack one piece. And I feel like that is an ace time.

The problem for Barcelona, there's been a protest over the weekend in which protesters fired water pistols at tourists. I think one might be the most polite form of protest, essentially just cooling people down on a hot day whilst making a political point. You know, everyone wins from this. I mean, the question is, are we not all just tourists on the hop on hop off bus ride of existence? No. And again, you know, Barcelona, I've been to Barcelona, I've been to Venice, I've been to some of those other places you mentioned, Tiff, and they've all got the same thing in common. They are really nice and people want to want to go to them. And the problem is that as the you know, there's nothing inherently wrong with tourism in itself. It's just the way that the free markets

have as well as previously discussed, they do not always throw their darts into the treble 20 of communal progress and shared benefit. And this has led to rents going up and city centers being almost stripped of any local people. It is a very delicate balance and underpinning it all is this genetic human urge to visit other places apart from where you live that has been pretty strong ever since the early days of evolution when a stressed out fish thought to itself, you know what I need? A beach holiday and evolve this way out of the sea. And since then, we've just not been able to shake that little that little sort of, you know, evolutionary echo from from from our minds.

But I guess the problem is, as the old saying goes, on the timeline of life, either side of a delicious steak is a dead cow and a pile of shit. And that's that's essentially what the I'm not sure if that is what, anyway, but you know, that's, I mean, it might be relevant. Who knows? Do you think that fish that like walked out of the ocean, did ever go back to the other fish and just wouldn't shut up about all the things that it's seen on the shore? It's like, oh yeah, slideshow here we go, Terry. Jesus Christ, we're glad you had a good time. We don't care.

You have to see grass. You just have, oh my God, you haven't seen grass. I'm embarrassed for you. Comes back with an accent. Barcelona. I forgot, I pronounced it wrong, you know, sorry, I pronounced it tolerably. Sometimes it's quite hard to take people... Well I think tolerably is a... that's a little tourist village outside Barcelona isn't it?

Like emergency news now, now obviously as've discussed, there are a lot of genuine emergencies around the world. But Britain is being ripped to pieces by a slew of fake emergencies emerging from music festivals and people having a good time. Police have issued a mosh pit based warning ahead of a festival this weekend, because people quote thrashing, slam dancing or pogoing at music is causing their wearable tech gadgets to trigger automated emergency calls to the police and ambulance services. So I mean, obviously, you know, the mosh pit has a deep place in our national heritage. Tiff, it began in medieval warfare and the numerous civil wars that we used to have where towards the end of a day's battle, if neither side would winning, each team's musicians with their various horns and loops would form a super group at the side of the battlefield and play what passed the dance

floor bangers back in the day. The remnants of the two armies would mosh fully armed and clad in metal until they could mosh no more and the winner was decided by the last man moshing. So it's a part of our history and our heritage. This could signal the end of the great British mosh pit. This is, these are very- The mosh will never end, Andy.

Very troubling. The mosh will never end. My favorite thing about mosh is that there's always a mosh pit admin. There's a lot of admin surrounding a mosh pit that people don't realize, but there's always someone who sort of organizes it and holds everyone back

until the appropriate moment to moshosh and they're controlling the crowd. It's normally like a beefy ball bloke in a leather waistcoat, a mosh elder if you like. And he has to be there to make sure that everyone goes in at the right time, either to minimize, I think it's less to minimize damage to each other and more to kind of go, we need exactly when the beat drops and we know when that bit is. So I was at Biffy Clyro gig at the end of last year in Shepherd's Bush Empire and there was some glorious, glorious mosh admin going on there. The young ones were definitely held back. They're like, listen, guys, you don't know what you're doing yet.

We've got more tattoos than you, so let us go first, lead it. It's good stuff, but I love this. This is what smart tech was built for, isn't it? Smart tech, like thinking people have been in an actual collision when they're just banging around each other and calling my doctor because my Apple watch has freaked out at my heart rate during intercourse,

those kind of things, that's what they're for. My blood pressure rising and it's called 999 because I'm raging at selling sunset on the TV. Like I'll keep watching it, but it makes me so angry. And I think this is what we made smart tech for, if not this. I just love it. How bleak is post-Brexit Britain that young people having a good time is an emergency. written that young people having a good time is an emergency. We need to alert the authorities. These young people are dancing and enjoying life. Shut it down.

I would like to say people of all ages are enjoying the mosh. The people of all ages. Is it download? So it's very specifically at download festivals so like in latitude i don't think anyone's in danger of of uh getting taken out in a mosh unless you count well i mean you say that tiff but there have been similar alerts triggered um for example at top ranking snooker events where the fact that a thousand people were sitting dead still for two hours was interpreted by their wearable tech as a sign that those people had been perma-frozen by an escaped ice blasting supervillain. So yeah, they are, you know, can work both ways really. Your tech can tell when you're depressed, you appear to have not moved off this sofa

and done any steps for three days in a row. Just constantly asking the snooker audience, are you still there? Which I do at my gigs every 15 minutes, just to be sure. Shout out to David Quirk, wonderful Australian comedian who I saw at a gig recently. He's wonderful. He's having a tough time. And on stage, he said, is everybody okay? Is anybody okay?

But yeah, that just shows where technology is that, you know, that wearable tech assumes that humanity must be involved in some kind of absolute, absolutely harrowing disaster, rather than be simply rocking out to some thrashcore metal-bop, bone-jangle, bass-wamp, drum-blast, brain-grunger, heavy-blast, wackadee-whack, rockadoodle, or whatever niche genre people are dancing to in these mosh pits. I mean, it's gone too far in terms of the alert system. It's gone too far from the old days when to send an alert that something bad was happening, you have to set up a chain of beacons a mile apart over several hundred miles and pass information via the medium of visible fire. I just think there must be some middle ground between those two that

works for us. Thank you for listening to this week's sub-episode. We will be back next week with Josh Gonderman and Josie Long. Until then, goodbye. Hi Buglers, it's Producer Chris here. I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now. Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything. So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.