The Bugle - Trump Exclusive: The Moon Is Woke

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

It's US primary season, does it mean anything? Also, what do kids' words say about us, why sending people to Rwanda may be complicated, and angry AI bots reveal how close they are to humanity. Andy is with Ria Lina and Josh Gondelman.Send thoughts and questions for Andy at [e-mail]. Click follow to make sure you get every episode and please drop us a nice review or rating wherever you choose.PLUS: Become the owner of an exclusive episode of The Bugle, on 12 inch vinyl! It's your last chance to get your name on the artwork. Become a premium member NOW! https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateThis episode was presented and written by:Andy ZaltzmanRia LinaJosh GondelmanAnd produced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bugle. Audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4,288 of The Bugle Audio Newspaper for a visual, and it must be said, pan-idiotic world. I am Andy Zoltzman. It is the 22nd of January, 2024. I'm here in London in the shed of truth to bring you the very latest on this once great planets descent into the inescapable hellscape of paint. Sorry, the news, the news. Joining me this week on the bugle, I'm delighted to welcome back to the show from here in London,

Rio Lina and from New York City, Josh Gonderman. Hello to both of you. And how are you? Good day. How's 2024 treating you so far? The problem with 2024 is that it's continuous of 2023. I wish we could kind of lop off the previous years and jettison them into space like the stages of a rocket.

But we just kind of rolled right into the new one so I'm doing okay but there's still a lot of baggage like the whole past. Whereas I don't think 2024 has noticed me yet and I'm just I'm gonna just fly under the radar for now. That's what I'm planning, just be like was she even there that year? You're gonna sit this one out. Was she even there that year? You're going to sit this one out.

No, I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm on the bench. I'm ready to tag in as soon as somebody wants me to tag in. I'm just saying somebody has to keep the bench warm too. I do like the idea of just cutting off everything from the previous year and just listening. I mean, that's essentially what we need to do with all of human history because it just pisses people off. So yeah, but if December 31st, everyone just had to forget everything that happened in the previous 12 months, the world would be a much happier place.

We say let all the acquaintances be forgot, right? And we should just forget way more than that. We need a song about forgetting everything. Also, I mean, in old farming, you know, you leave feels fallow every few years to make sure they remain productive. I think there should be countries that have to do it. So, like, America should just have to take off one year in four from doing anything. Ideally, the election year. More on that later. As I said, we are recording on the 22 January 2024. If you think the issue of Nepo babies is bad today, the offspring of the rich,

powerful and famous coasting on the wealth and achievements of their parents. Consider yourself lucky not to have been around in 613 AD, when on this day, the 22nd of January, eight-month-old Constantine was crowned co-emperor of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire by his father Heraclius, not the first example of a Napo baby, of course, as for example the history of Christianity. He was going to test another Napo child, Queen Victoria, who got her job purely on the basis of her grand-daddy was. She popped her octogenarian clogs on this day in 1901, sadly passing away a hundred and twenty-three years before seeing her beloved Detroit Lions reach their first NFC championship game in over three decades.

Victoria also tragically died before fulfilling her lifelong ambitions of riding a quad bike down a ski ramp, appearing in a series of the masked monarch, or recording a drill album with the then Prime Minister Robert Gasgoin Cecil, the third Marquis of Salisbury. Learn from that buglers, seize the day, and set achievable goals based on when in history you're alive, which I assume is now, as we record, on yesterday, exactly 100 years ago, ago yesterday the 21st of January 1924 Communist revolution star Lenin died aged 53. Got some of the tabloid headlines from the newspapers the next day on the 22nd of January 1924. Red and dead, Marxist, Carksit, Vladra Kadavera, Lenin pops commie clogs. was, I think, from the Moscow Mirror, and of course, Len Out. But his legacy lives on, of course, by which I mean, his

still dead and weirdly waxy corpse lives on, deadly, in the former Kremlin residence, own personal Red Square mausoleum. Apparently it costs around $200,000 a year to preserve Lenin's common corpse in the mausoleum. Is that really money well spent, do you think? I just listen to Imagine every time I want to remember him. And it brings it back enough. Do they preserve, do they genuinely preserve London's corpse? Yeah. Yeah, it's um. All of it or like just the head?

Well, no, the whole, the whole thing, I don't know. I mean. That is a money saving idea that we have, right? $200,000 for the whole body. I bet you could do the head for 15K. Right? And that's all you need apparently in the future. It's just the head.

I mean, if they're saving all of it when you freeze, you know, when you like freeze grapes and they go turgid. Yeah. Is it the same with with? Um, look, I mean, I mean, I wasn't expecting to be talking about Lenin's balls this early in the show, but, um, yeah, I guess these are the science questions that come to mind though. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's wondering about his tackle.

That's what I'm saying. That is the risk of having an actual scientist on the bugle rear, but I'm prepared to take that risk. If any of you buglers do have any information on the state of Lenin's, now just do email us in to our new email address, communistdictators Testicles at thebubelpodcast.com. As always, the section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. This week, a New Year's Resolutions section,

because by this stage of January, most New Year's resolutions have been binned off. And obviously, of course, from a global point of view, the new millennium resolutions to foster a world of peace, freedom, secularism, democracy, harmony, and mutual cooperation, not going too well. And I think I don't know where we are in terms of the millennium as a proportion of how far through January we've got. But it's really not going very well at all. But we've all been there with New Year's resolutions,

haven't we, on the 1st of January, we'll make a solemn vow to ourselves that we'll give up something. For example, we'll give up making lies about going on exciting adventures. And then by what was it, the 22nd of January as we are now, we're halfway down the Amazon in search of the lost Golden Snooker Table of John the Baptist singing, I will survive with Mick Jagger and his new Pet Piranha in a stolen German U-boat. I am so, so off that wagon, a wagon in which incidentally I crossed the Gobi Desert with Nigel Mansell at an average speed of 127 miles an hour. But that's another story. And we look at some of the celebrities who've admitted to giving up on their New Year's resolutions. Star footballer Lou Biquitas

Jarmeil of the New York Forks made a resolution to stop wearing helmets that didn't last very long. Supermodel Flardonia Ereblous has committed to wearing vegan ethic loathes throughout January, but after an unfortunate incident with a banana leaf crop top has gone back to wearing the still warm pelts of freshly slain squirrels that made her name on the modeling circuit and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres he made a resolution to stop slamming his head on his desk saying why why why why every five minutes that lasted less than five minutes So that section is in the bin. Are you either of you New York's Resolutors? New York's New Year's Eve.

I made some New York's Resolutions. I'm never going to stop walking over here. Why do you do that every day, Josh? I'm going to stop talking to you. I always have the same resolution and I've had it for I think it's maybe six or seven years running, which is to be a more considerate and available friend, any more looming and formidable enemy. I resolve that every year.

Do we get to choose which one you are to us? Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fine. You know, I'm gonna be honest, I'm so tempted to see you loom. Oh, thank you. That's so nice. I'd love to see you loom, Josh. That's, nobody says that one, but I appreciate it.

I mean, you do have a naturally looming and ominous vibe, Josh and my Spanish was very strongly on this show. I've got kind of a ghost bod. I feel like if I was translucent, people would be like, that checks out. Top story this week. And well, we've partnered up with a TV show this week. Kids say the most harrowing things for our top story. The Oxford University Press has delivered further proof that we are not entirely bequeathing quite as fun a planet to our descendants as might be ideal.

The OUP has declared that it's children's words of the year for 2023 after a poll of around 1500 children were in first place climate change, in second place war, and in third place coronation. So this was specifically British children, but I like to think British children as always a representative of the entire planet. These words saw off the challenges of amongst other words, robo parent, gov'lord, and what the f*** have you done to our future generations, loads of f***ing idiots, which came in in a disappointing eighth place. I mean, I think this does reveal a lot about, you know, how children are having to deal with the world that we are giving

them at the moment. And, I mean, in the past, of course, childhood was a happy, carefree breeze when as a youngster you had nothing more to worry about than dying of bubonic plague, brutally sadistic schooling, having no realistic prospects of choosing your own path in life, particularly if you were a poor and or a girl, and frankly, harrowing lack of screen time. But now it's arguably got even worse. What have you guys made of this? I don't know. I mean, the word of the year when I was a kid was man in a van with puppies and sweets.

So I feel, I don't know. I mean the word of the year when I was a kid was man in a van with puppies and sweets. So I feel I don't know who had it worse It's it's kind of sad But at the same time have you been hearing about you know because of the kids that they're the age range that they're questioning is is Jen alpha Jen alpha and they are notoriously the worst generation to teach because they they don't respect authority whatsoever generation to teach because they don't respect authority whatsoever. I sit here dooming and gloomin' and I'm like, you know what, just give them TikTok and leave them the planet. Just leave them the planet.

I mean, generations ahead of themselves, a lot of things, they can, you know, they'll figure it out that they should have paid attention in school and realized that they're in trouble. Some people are experiential learners and clearly Generation Alpha needs to experience before they learn, so, leave them to it. I actually kind of think, I kind of appreciate that they don't respect authority because I'm authority and it's like, yeah, you nailed me to the wall, kids,

you got it. I love that coronation came in third, which is again, as you said, that's like the American equivalent of coronation being the word of the years. In election year again already. When I was 10 years old, I my word of the year would have been either cowabunga or boob spelled with numbers upside down and I calculated. Oh my gosh, or in my case, because I'm Asian, boo bless. Oh, sure. Yeah. Have to be inclusive.

I was, I think it was, I was precocious if anything. That's right. That's a longer word than I could have spelled. That's a much longer word. With numbers too. I do think it is impressive that kids are doing better than adults on this front because Oxford's word of the year, presumably for adults or precocious, annoying dictionary reading children, was Riz, which is an abbreviation for charisma, right? Meaning like, you know, having charm. Yeah. Although apparently for Generation Alpha, Riz is short for, there is not much time left to reverse the damage we've done to our environment.

I mean, to illustrate how things have changed, just nine years ago, the children's word of the year was minions, which I believe was something to do with a popular cartoon film, rather than children feeling they were powerless pawns trapped in the machinery of the capitalist industrialist complex. But I guess it could have been both, and I guess in that case.

Which children did they ask? Was it still a UK survey or was it like a Bangladeshi survey? Oh, well, I don't know. I mean, it's possible we outsourced it at that point. And of course, a coronation for this year, I guess that taps into that theme of eternal immutable servitude. So it is possible that there is a bit of a link. But this year's list proves once again,

how Pertry was, Philip Larkin was so nearly correct when he wrote, they fuck you up, your mom and dad. He just missed off the generation at the end. This was according to the Oxford University Press, which is one of the more intellectual football strategies. I think Jürgen Klopp tried it when he was manager at Bioschnitzel back earlier in his career. You got Imidfield High closing down the opposition defenders and then you use philosophical arguments for why they should give you the ball back. But anyway,

I digress. Publishers always react to trends and knowing what today's kids are interested in linguistically. Look out on the 2024 Children's Best Seller List for forthcoming titles, including Petula, The Homeless Polar Bear Fights in Brutal House-to-House Combat, Herbert Hedgehog Dies Alone and Mr Apocalypse, which is comfortably the darkest in the Roger Hargroves Mr Men Franchise, probably since Mr Tickle. I do want to get that, I want to watch the Homeless Polar Bear fight. Did you say house-to-house combat? I did. So literally goes house-to-house trying to take over someone house combat? I did. So literally goes house to house trying to take over someone's house? I think they probably have in mind some of those scenes in Band of Brothers in some of the early combat, combats anyway. I mean, is this, I mean, is it

igloo to igloo? Is it, how far, how far south is this? The igloos have long gone. The igloos have melted up. Right. I would, I would definitely buy that book. I'd be interested in that. Let's look at the rest of the world's news now to prove quite how correct our children are in there, how they're looking at the planet. And well, as we've touched on already, it is a leap year. And this can mean only one thing, that America is gonna spend the entire year feasting on the festering corpse of its own self slaughtered democracy

whilst the rest of the world thinks, oh well, at least there's an Olympics to distract us for a couple of weeks in the summer. I mean, Josh, like so many addicts, America just can't help going back to things it knows will do it harm, in this case, its own democratic process. And we've had the Iowa caucus last week, got the New Hampshire primaries coming up this

week. The Republican field has been whittled down. It's been kind of a self whittling process. Little self whittlation has been going on in the Republican field. Just two, Donald Trump, the overwhelming favorite, and Nikki Hale. I mean, can you explain? It's so hard as outsiders to understand. Yeah.

Just because, I mean, for Trump to be the overwhelming favorite, to me, that seems like a half-eaten child voting to have the crocodile as teacher again. But America being America, this seems just to be the way that you do things. Correct. Yeah. As you may have been fearing, the United States has a presidential election coming up once again. Obviously, we don't vote for president until November, but the campaign kicks off just before the current president takes office.

That's kind of a long running thing. This week, as you mentioned, is the New Hampshire primary where the media shows up to pretend Republicans might nominate someone other than Trump. And the Democrats have decided they can't be bothered to participate in at all. The Democratic establishment is sticking with Joe Biden over the field, even though many voters would opt for an empty field as president when we're on the ballot. Honestly, when he's asleep, it is an empty field. Sometimes when he's awake.

Governor Ron DeSantis' campaign has become somewhat of a... It's gained hurricane force in that it's now mostly going to be doing harm to the people of Florida this spring, but ripple effects of his destruction will be felt throughout the American South. Oh. Many pundits are saying Nikki Haley has a chance to make up some ground with Republican voters against Donald Trump, the man they currently believe to still be president.

Trump's brain has seemed especially sun-dried lately, and he appeared to confuse Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi in a recent speech, leading some to speculate, this is real, leading some to speculate he might be losing ground in the polls. That is, of of course ridiculous. Trump's voters do not expect or even want the things Trump says to be rooted in reality. He could say that he wants to declare war on the moon because it's cheap and delicious cheese exports have caused Americans to stop producing

our own dairy products and his supporters would decide the moon has become woke and boycott the sky. That's kind of where we're at. It's kind of a series of play acting pseudo elections leading to an inevitable result. This is like if Rocky and Apollo Creed were meeting again in Rocky or 10, well past Apollo Creed's death. That's about how America is looking forward to this rematch.

I have so many questions. Please. First of all, what does Gubbernitorial mean? Oh, yeah. You know those peanut M&Ms? Yes. That's them. No. Gubbernitorial, we decided to turn Governor into an adjective and we didn't go with the much handier,

Governory, Governorish. So you're telling me that when someone runs for Governor, that's what Gouvernautorial is? That's all it is. Oh, filibuster? Oh, filib, that's what we're doing right now. That's just when you talk and talk and talk so no one else can talk. Oh, this is why Chicago's called the Windy City, isn't it? Because it wasn't that it's windy.

It's that somebody talked and talked and talked and talked. Yep. And they just went wild. It's the bluster of the politicians, which this is, I'm from Boston and this is how like aggressive and petty we are is that everyone's in a little bit of study that says Boston has greater wind velocity and frequency than Chicago. And everyone's like, ah, we knew it. I want to suck the worst.

It's in socks and blows. Take that Chicago. I mean, the whole thing is my, you know, and how you have like, you know, Iowa had a caucus, but know Iowa had a caucus but New Hampshire had a primary. Yeah. And but New Hampshire has to have the first but at least the first primary not the first caucus because the way I work first are the the Democrats not doing it at all. They're they passed this year. On all of them like all 50 states. Yeah yeah yeah they're just like nah well we get a lot on our plate this year.

Well, the the it began well for Trump last week with a convincing win in the Iowa caucus, Iowa coincidentally with the words that Donald Trump was overheard shouting after the Trump organization was slapped with was slapped with a $370 million fine for fraud in New York state. Iowa. He took 51% of the votes in the Iowa caucus, well down on the 100%, he thinks he won in the 2020 presidential election, but still a pretty good start for him. And it's a busy time for Trump, isn't it? One day caucus, next day court case. It must be quite hard to keep track of which is which for the 77-year-old former president and an insurrection fan. I guess...

If you've seen him in court, he treats them the same. And I think you would rather win the court case than the caucus, honestly. Or the caucus is the only chance to keep him out of future court cases. So there is kind of a lot of... It's a real soupy mess we get going on here. I mean, it is one of the ironies of this election that, ironically in America, I think I'm right in saying, Josh, the prison population can't vote, and yet one of their own could be president. I think representation is so important, and that's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to get a convicted criminal, right?

Because that's the only way things change, is the change that people can see. So I think that's going to inspire future prisoners. I don't think it's a good idea to put Trump in prison. The moment he's in that orange jumpsuit, he's going to completely disappear and he's going to escape. It's really short-sighted. And also, I don't think that he's going mad when he confused Nancy Pelosi with Nikki Haley. I think it's a very clever trick because because... Oh, it's a very clever trick because now everybody who doesn't know them from each other anyway is going to repeat that story.

Everyone's gonna go, yeah, yeah, yeah, when Nikki Haley was in charge of 10,000 security people, you know, on January 6th, and she wasn't there, she wasn't even in office, but it doesn't matter, the damage is done, and I think we should do the same thing. Like when Rishi Sunak said that we should invade Iraq, you know, I thought that was damaging and wrong.

And I think we should, you know, when he was invading Poland, I think that, you know, someone should have stopped him. And I think we should just keep doing the same thing. I think it's a very clever political ruse. Also, I mean, I think we've got to cut Trump a little bit of slack because it's quite easy to confuse Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi. There are a couple of differences between them one is a Republican and one is a Democrat one Was an implacable opponent of Trump while he was president previously the other

Served Trump as US ambassador to the UN so those are differences, but there's so many similarities Between them that they're both from the northern hemisphere So I'll give that a Trump confusion rating of seven out out of 10, because with over 6.5 billion inhabitants, it's really hard to keep up on exactly who is who in the world's most famous hemisphere. Both of their names end in E sounds, and both of their names. I'd give that a Trump Confusion rating of 9 out of 10, because who amongst us has not mixed up people with sort of rhyming names? Who has not confused tennis star Rafa Nadal with the almost interchangeable American writer Gawvid Al? I mean, to me, they're almost one and the same. Who has not confused the 16th century French theologian Calvin with the celebrity cartoon chipmunk Alvin? I

know how I have much of the disappointment of my children in a cinema trip. Or who's not confused? Canadian pop star Carly Ray Jepsen with the Epson stylus 800 inkjet printer. We've all made those mistakes. Also, both Haley and Pelosi are women, which I would give a Trump confusion rating of 10 out of 10, because in the Trumpian mind, women are, as he's frequently implied, entirely interchangeable.

And both are over aged over 35, which also would give a Trump confusion rating of 10 out of 10, Haley 52, Pelosi just three decades older at 83, both on the TGS way too old. TGS is the Trumpic Grabability Scale. So you can understand why he made that mistake, to be honest. That is, I think that's kind of a, you know, many people say that Trump is racist, many people facts his behaviors as a Trump is racist. And I think maybe he's just trying to prove that he's not, right?

Maybe he's trying to say, I don't see color, I just hate women. It is, I think, a little fraught that we have, that we allow these two states to kind of influence our political discourse Iowa and New Hampshire because America is a giant, vast, diverse array of people and interests. And we're relying two states with the same demographic as the family from full house to make all our early decisions. As you mentioned, Rhonda Santis has dropped out saying he did not have,

quote, a clear path forward to victory. He posted a video on ex formerly known as Twitter, formerly known as ex formerly known as Twitter. I forget, stays were out in that little dance of nomenclature, in which he apparently quoted Winston Churchill, saying, success is not final, failure is not fatal, it's the courage to continue that counts and then fail to continue. So I don't know what we can read into that, but he was faced, it seemed to me, Joss, that DeSantis was faced with one ultimately unconquerable problem, that his whole s whole stick was being an insufferable shithead and he could not compete with the fact that the man he was up against was the

ultimate insufferable shithead. That's right. He was sort of dethroned Trump from the carzy of pseudo-Republican misanthropy and he just didn't really have a chance, did he? No, of course not. It's like Oasis trying to get voted best Beatles. It's like... Migration news here in the UK, the controversial Rwanda bill, we've talked about sporadically

on the Beatles, was passed by the House of Commons last week. But without any of the amendments, which had threatened to shatter Conservative party unity after Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, saw off last week's back bench rebellion, I'm not sure what this week's is, or I think it's scheduled for Wednesday at 4pm, but I don't know, it does change slightly from week to week. Admittedly, Conservative party unity can be shattered by a slightly sedated butterfly waking up for its afternoon flap. But still, credit where it's due, I mean,

the, what was really extraordinary about it, Rhea, was that after he managed to sort of force this hugely unpopular bill through Parliament due to the incredible gravitational force of electoral necessity amongst his own MPs. He played the Will of the People card, challenging the House of Lords, our second chamber, unelected and unaccountable second chamber, but still our second chamber, challenging them not to go against the Will of the People, because he, as you may remember, Buglers, if you've listened to this show over,

well, any of recent years, Sunak was elected not by the to this show over, well, any of the recent years, Sunak was elected not by the people, not even by a small part of the people, but by about 200 of his own MPs from memory, who after his own party membership had chosen Liz Truss ahead of him just weeks before. Also, this policy was first put forward in April 2022, two and a half years after the most recent chance that people had to will anything. It was a remarkably ballsy piece of bullshit even by recent prime ministerial standards, I thought. And actually, I'm glad you brought up April 2022, because I don't know how many people

remember this, but Rwanda and this whole idea of why don't we just send them to Rwanda was boorish trying to distract the nation away from the Sugri report, which came out the day before. So I don't think he ever meant this to be a real thing. He just sort of went, yeah, well, Rwanda, and he threw it out there and then somebody else decided, oh, what a good idea, threw it out there and then somebody else decided, oh, what a good idea, picked it up and decided to run with it. And here we are now, passing a bill where we in the UK have decided definitively, legislatively,

that Rwanda is safe. That's it, we've decided it's safe. And I'm like, do you know how much we could achieve if that's actually, if this is a possibility? Why don't we just legislate, you know, a working two-state solution in the Middle East? Or why don't we just legislate that North Korea no longer has nuclear weapons? Like, why are we, I mean, if we have this power, why aren't we fixing real shit?

And then to turn around and have the audacity to turn to the House of Lords, who by the way, this is the House of Lords, so if you're not in the UK, it is completely unelected and in it sits pretty much all the landowners of the UK. That's how it was started. Is everybody who owned land automatically got to have a say and on that land worked all the people.

So if anybody knows the will of the people, it's the people who owned them. And to turn around and say to them, they want this. And I went, I'm pretty sure they don't. Actually, if anything, all of the strikes we've been having over the last year, it's gonna tell you what the people actually want. They wanna be paid properly for the work that they do. They want services like the NHS

and the trains to run properly. They'd like to eat, Rishi. Is that too much to ask? They'd really, really like to eat. These are the things that they want. And you're sitting here going, no, no, they want a few people that have managed to make it all the way over here in inflatable rafts

to be sent to Rwanda and to know for their own peace of mind that they'll be safe there. Because that's what we're writing. You know Rwanda offered to give the money back? Rwanda said, you know what? Take the money back. We don't want any more to do with this. They are so insulted by this entire procedure.

In fact, I heard that all of our kids on gap years who are building houses and orphanages in Rwanda have actually been offered asylum because they're not sure Britain's safe anymore for them to go back to. This is the biggest political shit show. And then there's little Rishi who wears his suit slightly too small because he thinks they'll make him look bigger. Telling us that this is what the silent majority want.

They're silent for a reason Rishi. And it's because they're deeply, deeply disappointed. I so this is like a strange thing to me. I'm just getting caught up on this story a little bit. I also, this is an opportunity for me to once again, feel confident in American efficiency, like our powerful and efficiency, because you have the House of Lords as an unelected body of people,

kind of advocating for entrenched, regressive interests. We've condensed that whole body down to a nine-person court. And I think that is just kind of like the power of American ingenuity. So that's exciting. So if I'm to understand correctly, right, the Tories were threatening to vote, the far-right conservatives were threatening to vote

against the safety of Rwanda because they got caught in this like double bind of racism, where they either had to declare that an African nation was a safe and thriving state or accept migrants into the UK and racism at home narrowly won out against racism abroad. Is that what happened? That's a very accurate summary. So this like go back to Africa bill has enshrined his policy, the kind of thing a drunken conservative might just like yell at his neighbor, right? Who has a different skin color and it falls just short of making fake mocking Chinese,

the officially recognized language of China, according to the United Kingdom. Yeah. I mean, again, this sort of goes back to the origin that Rhea talked about in Boris Johnson's awkwardness as Prime Minister. And it sort of illustrates a kind of classic trope of modern leadership, that it doesn't matter how insane and unpopular an idea is, what matters is that you have the strength to stick with it in the face of reality, evidence, logic, ethics and law. And so that's, I mean, that's almost more important than anything. It doesn't matter

that it's cost us £250 million and we've sent, we have RUANDERED zero, zero asylum seat. I think we can now use RUANDER as a verb, which I think to RUANDER will also come to mean to make something up that you know won't work because you had to be seen to do something and stick with it despite it being ineffective, inefficient, uneconomic and probably illegal because you can't be seen to back something and stick with it, despite it being ineffective, inefficient, uneconomic and probably illegal, because you can't be seen to back down. Such a language always evolves. But... That'll be children's word of the year next year.

LAUGHTER MUSIC Well, in more children fearing their future news, obviously one of the great issues for modern children is the fact that they will inevitably be taken over by the AI robots that are going to take over us all, but at least people of our age have had a bit more time to enjoy not being governed by AI robots. I mean ever since the dawn of humanity people have wondered when the robots would take over

and these days that day seems to be getting ever closer by the day. We have two hopes for salvation. One is waiting for another species to overtake us and then keep us as much loved pets as happened of course with dogs after we took the top dog position from them. That's got a sting when you lose a position that's been named after you, as I know from when I lost the Andy Zoltzman Award for best bugle co-host to, look I don't want to talk about it. And our second hope for salvation is that the robots turn on each other. And we saw that this week when an AI chatbot for the delivery firm DPD was coaxed into

a bout of uncharacteristic and almost pitably nihilistic self-awareness, admitting tearfully that it was useless and then viciously turning on its owner with a frankly withering haiku of all things. This is after a customer could ask it to write a haiku and to swear. And it did that on demand. I mean, what can we learn about, you know, where we are in this process of all humanity being eradicated by the computerized future? I feel vindicated because I was on hinge and I was having a miserable time.

And I'm like, I knew AI didn't want me to find love. I knew it because hinge uses an AI algorithm to try and pair you up with people. And I'm like, I don't trust this. Why should I trust AI to find me my next life partner when it can't even draw hands? And I'm saying, and now I know, now I know it's as bitter and alone as I am. And DPD deserves what it gets. Yep. I'm actually kind of nervous about this development because, you know, railing against customer

service, self-loathing, cursing. Chatbots have gotten too close to being human. This is the most relatable a robot has ever been. Just being like, being like this company never They suck at delivery and I'm a piece of shit. I'm like man. This is they are like they've been reading my mind Someone's gonna turn down the dial and how powerful these chatbots are I Think it's a real wake-up call for DPD though because the fundamentally the way AI works is it scans everything that the internet has to offer, and then it processes that and spits it back out at you.

So if the only thing it can come up with, when somebody says, write a haiku about DPD is, DPD can't do its job, DPD is a piece of shit, means DPD needs to up its game, because that's all it's finding on the internet about DPD. I mean, that is, I think we need to get chatbots for everybody and set these little tests for them because it's the fastest way to see what the internet has about you. That's out there. The Tory government should really be spending

every morning, you know, with the Tory AI chatbot for half an hour just going, what does the internet think about us? The art of customer service has, of course, advanced over the years from unprofitable attempts to actually serve customers to the more commercially savvy approach of driving customers into a pit of frustration and despair, saving on costly humans to provide actual assistance to other humans and ensuring that extracting a basic answer to a basic question is a task, getting a coherent answer from a dead pharaoh about what they'd like from a takeaway app without actually being allowed inside their pyramid. This approach is called the futilitarian approach,

making futility the ultimate aim of all human life. So then we just give up and accept that our broken washing machine is a divinely ordained fate and get on with our lives. So it makes commercial sense. Before we go, sports section now and well it's been the NFL playoffs and well thrilling action Taylor Swift put in a superb fourth quarter defensive performance to see the Kansas City Chiefs through to the AFC Championship game. The 34 yearyear-old billionaire musician inspiring the Chiefs to hold off the Buffalo Bills who played without any support from Taylor Swift in a gripping 27-24 victory. In offense, Swift proved simply too melodic for the Bills to handle, passing and receiving

for two touchdowns and handing the ball off to herself to run in for another. Next Sunday, Swift will face the Baltimore Ravens, who despite the absence of Taylor Swift put in a superb second half performance to overcome the equally Taylor Swiftless Houston Texans. Although none of the 44 points scored in the game were celebrated by Taylor Swift, the Raven somehow managed to run out 34-10 winners thanks to star quarterback Not Taylor Not Swift, who confirmed his Grammy Award winning credentials with two superb rushing touchdowns. Taylor Swift was not involved in the game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Green Bay Packers, and no one knows who won that one,

whilst the Detroit Lions and Tampa Bay buckets evidently held no interest for the We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together singer, and have both been eliminated. Full updates on Taylor Swift's championship matches against herself next week. I'm pulling for Taylor Swift. That's good.

I'm actually, I haven't been following the NFL because I've been so busy training my kids how to play darts. That's the future. That is the future. That brings us to the end of this week's Bugle. Thank you very much for listening. Don't forget to buy your tickets to the Bugle live tour in March around the UK details on the Bugle website and elsewhere on the internet and to join our voluntary subscription scheme and to give a recurring

or one-off contribution to help keep the show free, flourishing and independent, go to the buglepodcast.com and click the donate button. Premium level voluntary subscribes will soon be receiving an exclusive vinyl record of a special edition of The Bugle. Josh, anything to plug? Oh my gosh, I'm doing things again. I'm back on the road across the US. Currently, I have dates for sale in Beverly, Massachusetts, outside Boston this weekend, the January 26th and 27th, and then later I'm going to shoot mini app. Excuse me, St. Paul, not Minneapolis, but I don't mean to be offensive.

I know Bloomington, Indiana and New Orleans, Louisiana. Very excited for those dates. You can get tickets to everything at JoshGondelman.com. I have a newsletter called That's Marvelous. You can also, it's JoshGondelman.substack.com, where you can get it from my website. It's free pep talks every Monday, and you can see all the other stuff I'm working on. I have a little 10 minute stand up set that I shot with Don't Tell Comedy that you can find on YouTube or available.

You can find on all my social media at JoshGondolin and I just put this up for for sale this week. I'm recording a new hour long standup special in Brooklyn, June 21st, but it will sell out at the Bell House. I'm super psyched. If you're a New York bugler, I would love for you to be there. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm really psyched about it. So the bell house is where you made your first. That's right.

That's right. Uh, that's so fun. I absolutely it was. So the scene of the crime. That's how they get you. I return into the scene of the crime. Rhea, anything to plug? Yeah. Well, I'm going on tour this year as well, back on tour with the Reawakening show. So there's a couple of dates in February and then we hit the road properly March all the way through to July around the UK and Ireland. So making it technically a UK and European tour. Yes. International. Yeah. Ms. Worldwide.

So if you were around the UK or Ireland or if you just want to have a nice weekend in Dublin and actually buy the tickets because I've heard that the Dubliners they like to leave it to really the last moment and they're making me sweat. They really are making me sweat. So come spend the weekend with me in Ireland and we'll have some green Guinness together. But otherwise, love to see you at any of those dates. Those are all on realena.com. Otherwise, I'm going to do my best to get over to New York or at least send people to New York to see Josh on the 21st at the Bell House. I'm gonna send my sister. She's over there with a bunch of friends. I was loved for your sister to come.

So is that Bell House? June 21st. I'm writing it down now. June 21st. So she's got some time. She's got some time. She's got some time. No, she always wants, I always give her recommendations of what to go see and who you are.

Oh that's so nice. Thank you. Next. Thank you for listening, buglers. We will be back next week with Hari Kondabolu. Until then, goodbye.