BREAKING NEWS: The Future Never Runs Out Of Money

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4346 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual and frankly toasty world.

Right now I'm Andy Zaltzman coming to you live from the swelterous city of Birmingham where angels fear to threaten us, sorry, not where Angels fear to threaten, where I have come for the cricket, which begins tomorrow, the second England v India Test match.

And with the tentative sort of ceasefire holding in the Iranio-Israeliac, Will They, Won't They, Militarous Bat, it is looking increasingly likely that we might get all of the England-India cricket series in before the world is enveloped in an apocalyptic species-ending nukoff.

So, I'm in a good mood this week and to share this joy with me.

I'm joined firstly from from New York City by Josh Gondelman.

Hello, Josh.

Hello.

It is a real joy despair roller coaster over here and I'm glad to be riding it with you for a little while.

And also joining us from Glasgow, it's Josie Long.

Hello, Josie.

Hello, from the place most likely to be instantly vaporized in the UK in a nuclear conflict.

Oh, right.

Right next to those nukes over in wherever they are.

Oh, we share that.

Over in Faslane?

Is that secret?

Are we supposed to share that on a podcast?

Please don't stream this to our enemies.

You're right next to Faslane.

I will be a fine film dust the second it kicks off.

And isn't that all we can hope for?

Yeah, exactly.

Just, you know, make it make it quick and make it filmy.

That's what you want from your nuclear apocalypses.

We are recording on the 1st of July 2025.

On the 1st of July, 1908, SOS was was adopted as the international distress signal.

Little did they know that 117 years later, those three simple letters would basically be a translation of every single news bulletin and scientific report.

So next time you're just working out an international distress signal, try and do it quite as efficiently as that.

In 1987, the American radio station WFAN was launched in New York City.

It was the world's first all-sports radio station.

Was this the moment that civilization truly began, or was it the moment that that civilization began to end?

You decide, buglers.

You decide.

I'm too invested in it.

There is evidence that the ancient Romans had a radio station devoted to sport.

Well, a guy shouting in the forum, responding to members of the public, telling them what they thought.

According to a scroll recently deciphered that contained transcripts of all the conversations in Rome, the conversations on the ancient Roman sports radio included, the lions were terrible today, Alan.

They barely even nibbled at the Christians.

I don't know why I bother paying my money to watch that rubbish.

So we've not really moved on, to be honest, in the 2,000 years since.

What does WFA stand for?

Does it stand for we're fing all nerds?

Josie, I take that as a personal slight.

As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin.

And, well, on the subject of sport, we have a special Wimbledon section.

In the bin, we review some of the new shots that are being unveiled by the players at Wimbledon this year, including the backhand roundhouse dink slam, the cross-court behind-the-back hanging looper, and the growling windmill block volley.

Look out for them as the tournament evolves.

Also, the new noises being developed by players as they hit the ball.

These include sounding like you're trying to open a heavy door with your elbow whilst carrying a large pile of books.

You might hear one of the players go,

inadvertently walking into a bollard,

trying to recreate for a police officer the noise an escaped donkey made whilst rampaging through a stall at a village bake sale.

Realizing that you've walked three quarters of the way to the railway station but forgot to bring your pack lunch with you.

And thinking about the disappointing final series of much-loved TV drama.

So, listen out for those at Wimbledon.

Also, the first year they've

done away with human line judges, they've brought in an automated system, but there have been complaints that people can't hear the automated calls without being able to see a line judge sticking out their arm whilst whelping false.

I'm trying to avoid a 150-mile-an-hour serve down the middle from hitting them square in the pluter.

It's hard to know when a ball is out, so there are suggestions that next year's Wimbledon could involve uh robot line judges with lasers in their eyes which could improve uh old court discipline uh significantly and uh in our wimbledon section we track the latest strawberry-based controversies including allegations that there are tracking devices in wimbledon's famous strawberries is this true no but is it also true that government ministers use their power to covertly secure strawberry supply contracts for their friends even though their friends had no experience in the strawberry industry, resulting in customers complaining that their strawberries were, in fact, either inflated raspberries or ping-pong balls painted red.

And will Wimbledon's new dynamic strawberry pricing structure prove unpopular?

The price of the strawberries is now tagged to the prize money up for grabs in that day's matches.

So a punnet that cost £10 in the first round costs £300 on finals weekend.

But if you eat it whilst watching doubles, you only have to play about 20% of the price.

Will that incentivize the strawberries to perform better?

We'll have exclusive coverage for you as the tournament evolves.

And we look at the new tantrum analysis data from companies such as Strop Tracker, Tantralyzer, and Kiniptech Huffmeter,

which can now measure the force through the racket frame when a player smashes their racket against the net post.

It can also measure the protuberance of facial veins during a rant at the chair umpire at a key stage in the deciding set.

It measures the extra square centimeters of air exhaled by players due to temper flarages during key moments of a match.

And work out scientifically the ratio of blame apportioned by a player to their coaching team, equipment, crowd surface, crowd weather, passing wildlife, the cruel hand of fate-basically, anything that isn't themselves.

So, all this tech helps you get closer than ever to the mid-meltdown tennis star, and it's really bringing exciting new dimensions to the coverage.

All that reviewed in our section in the bin.

Top story this week: America News.

Well, Josh, as we record, your one big, beautiful bill is on its way through the highly diseased digestive system of American politics.

Bring us up to date with exactly what is going on, why, and what the f ⁇ it all means.

This is a great question.

And I am humiliated that we have to call it the one big, beautiful bill.

Although I guess because it is a Trump thing, we should be grateful that he didn't call it the big, thick bill that never has trouble getting hard no matter what anyone tells you.

It has been a tough week.

So, here's where we stand now: the Senate, which is half of our legislature, or one of the two houses of our legislature, is in the midst of a votorama to amend the budget, another wildly undignified term for creating

people.

Votorama, that's what they call it.

I thought you were being funny and women's.

No, I did not make that up.

Uh, I would go, given how horribly this is going and what the effects will be, with a vote flagration or or kind of an American vote stock 99

for a throwback.

So, yeah, they're voting on all the amendments.

That's what's happening now.

There's a huge amount of funding for border enforcement.

And in addition to the racism and violence this will promote, it is also extremely corrupt.

Hiring more cops of any kind is a huge handout to the Oakley Sunglass Corporation.

Open your eyes, people, and then take off your tinted lenses so you can see better.

It's been really bad.

The border stuff has been bad.

I know this is a little digression, but the whole country, ICE,

has cracked down racistly on people of color doing, you know, kind of suspicious things like having jobs and walking down the street.

And the Trump administration has hastily put up a migrant prison in Florida that they're calling Alligator Alcatraz.

That's real.

The bill itself, going back to the bill, it's really bad.

For a while in it, there was a tax on alternative energy sources.

So not only were they stripping funding from wind and solar energy, but they were actually taxing people to

use that kind of energy to promote it.

It's pretty cold to be against gender transition and objectively pro-climate change.

So, they are for change only when things are getting worse.

They stripped out a provision proposed by adult debate kid Ted Cruz that would have made it illegal to regulate AI for a full decade.

It was voted down 99 to 1, although I'm sure Google's AI summary says it's set to go into effect tomorrow.

And

the bill, if it goes through, it seems likely to take away a ton of funding from Medicaid, which in millions of people will lose their healthcare.

And it's really scary.

America has been in a rough place to begin with with healthcare, of course.

And if our social safety net were a literal safety net, we would be a country full of dead trapeze students.

So it's a bad time.

Well, I guess in terms of the environmental schemes and

taxing green energy, cutting environmentally beneficial schemes, I guess the long-term plan is to save money by rendering all of the USA completely uninhabitable.

And so is this not the kind of far-sighted long-term politics that we don't see enough of these days?

Also, I think it will achieve their goal of fewer immigrants incoming, right?

Because once we are kind of a mad max hellscape, we are going to become a nation of outgoing immigrants very quickly.

I was just going to say it's a brilliant plan.

If you want to deter people from coming to your country to make it as bad as you possibly can.

I also think economically it's very bold to take a strategy of kind of

making people's lives worse to really, really transfer all the remaining wealth on earth to the same three rich guys because obviously historically it's never ever ever worked.

But I feel like Trump's strategy with it is to say, but imagine if it did.

This is really wild.

I've heard this bill described as the greatest upward transfer of wealth in history, which is kind of impressive because I didn't know the rest of us had enough money at this point for that even to be possible.

I thought they had so much money that we couldn't possibly top the previous upward transfers of wealth.

I was thinking, I read this quote by one of Biden's former advisors and she said, Republicans are testing the proposition that there is nothing they can do to working class people to make them lose their support.

And I just thought like the level of like kink in the American working class is unbearable to me.

Like they can't even imagine not having a boot on their neck.

So their only choice is to lick it.

It's very scary to me.

Republican Senator Katie Britt said, we're going to make sure that hardworking people can keep more of their money.

But all the sort of economic analysis seems to suggest that they'll be keeping more of much less money that they'll be having.

I I don't know how that works mathematically.

And the stuff they're trying to buy with it will be more expensive.

So they'll end up even further in debt.

So in essence, they'll be keeping more of their own money, which will actually involve keeping less of someone else's money.

But I think that's what people voted for.

So I think we've just got to respect that.

Still, sadly, no sign of the flying magic bison shitting gold bars from the skies of America.

that the whole economic scheme is based on that we've we've been tracking this on the bugle for some months now someday it will come and all the economic mass will start to add up.

See, what you shouldn't worry about with the bill, Josh, is that it is also wildly unpopular.

Don't worry about that.

Not only will it be unsuccessful, everyone will hate it.

This bill is kind of like a hot dog in that it's like dominating the news around the 4th of July.

And the more people learn what's in it, the more nauseated they feel.

I also saw that 55% of people oppose it, 31% of people support it, which obviously adds up to 86% because Americans use like pounds and ounces or something.

When When something is this bad, right?

When our legislature is on the verge of making a truly disastrous decision that will probably result in like death and poverty,

people are encouraged, like, call your reps, tell them to vote no on the bill.

And I understand that democracy is participatory and it asks us to show up every day, but some of them have to realize already this is bad.

Like they're reading the same news I have, they might know more.

It's just crazy to me that you'd think stop voters in your jurisdiction from dying would not be incentive enough for them to just kind of vote.

And it's like, what can you say if they're in favor of the bill?

You call them.

There's only so much you can say.

You go, I want to urge them to vote no.

And they go, okay, they're not going to do that.

You can't call up your senator and be like, hey, man, I'm going to come down there and kick your ass.

Like, he's a hardware store owner that sold you a broken lawnmower.

Like, what are we supposed to say to these people who want us to die?

But Josh, imagine the thrill if you did happen to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

Like, if it was your call, like 1007.

You call them and you, I don't even know what you say.

1007, they change their mind publicly and you know it was you.

You know what?

Worst case scenario, I get to meet an FBI agent.

I've never done that before.

It's been suggested that the bill will increase the US budget deficit by $2.5 trillion over the next decade, which sounds like a lot of money.

until you put it in context of what the budget deficit already is, which is shitloads of trillions more than that.

And also, even if it does, it increased the budget deficit by that much, Josh.

$2.5 trillion.

That is someone else's problem.

And that person lives far away in the future.

So this is, and they're very, very, we've talked about this before in the Bugle as well.

The future never runs out of money.

They're very, very generous.

They're very, very rich.

We're basically basing on the assumption that they will have found a magic new element that's worth a billion times more than gold.

and looks a bit similar and is liquid until it gets hot, unlike gold and grows in the middle of eggs.

So, you know, it's all going to work out.

We just need to just need to give it time and not burden it with the cynicism of

the 2020s.

Trump has warned that if the bill doesn't pass, there will be a 68% tax rise.

The evidence that he's given for this is the evidence that he gives for anything.

Absolutely f cool.

But

it's a bizarre kind of threat.

Isn't it basically like a veterinary surgeon saying that if you don't pay pay him a $100,000 to do a one-cheek Brazilian butt lift on your pet dolphin, then instead he'll have to perform a full-body horizontalizing corporeal redistribution procedure.

In other words, run your dolphin over with a steamroller.

Now, this doesn't mean that the butt lift is therefore the right option,

but it does mean that none of it makes logical sense.

Whatsoever.

I hope I've explained it in accessible terms for any dolphin owners out there.

Where do you think a dolphin's butt is?

I'm kind of picturing one cheek next to, like, on each side of the blowhole, but that can't be right.

That's how all the dolphins appreciate each other, you know?

Look at the dime on that.

I wonder if I could look at several photos of dolphins and deem which ones were most attractive.

But I don't know in dolphin culture what the values are.

Yeah, it would be very funny if I chose one and they were like, that guy looks like JD Vance.

Yeah, yeah.

Just like, oh, that's a long, creepy tale.

Elon Musk ex-tweeted about it.

All I'm asking is that we don't bankrupt America, which I guess is the kind of thing that someone who is not a natural-born American would tweet, because basically the entire economic history of America is finding ways to bankrupt America.

And, you know, Elon Musk can't just waltz in from his outsider's perspective and say that this is not a good idea.

It's pretty amazing how much debt.

America is in.

Like, at this point, it feels like we're trying to set the new debt high score.

Like that's what the goal, it's like, how much debt can we accrue without doing anything for people?

It's incredible.

I did read an argument where they said basically, we need more money for healthcare.

So if we cut the money for healthcare, we'll then have that money to spend on healthcare.

I thought, I suppose that makes some technical sense.

You need money for food and then you don't buy any food and just hold on to that money and then give that money to the richest people on earth.

And if the total amount of food that you can purchase, you meaning everyone on earth remains the same, it doesn't matter who's doing the purchasing, right?

As long as there's an equal amount of broccoli to go around.

It doesn't matter if it's going around.

Also, no one really likes broccoli.

So, you know.

You say that to Marshmallow the hamster.

He's absolutely obsessed with it.

And fortunately, he's Jeff Bezos' hamster, so he's up to his eyeballs in broccoli, which is not that much broccoli on a hamster.

It's about an inch eye.

That's why hamster billionaires, it never works out.

Dolphin butt cheeks and hamster billionaires who truly have raised the bar for discourse.

That's what modern economics is these days.

You've just got to find ways of illustrating it.

Well, in slightly more

positive news for those of a

progressive persuasion or a non-regressive persuasion, the New York Merrill primary has resulted in a surprise victory for Zoran Mamdani over Andrew Cuomo, who people had assumed was just old enough and crooked enough to win by default.

But that hasn't happened.

Can you explain why, either of you?

Look, I've been taking a victory lap on this all week, and not just because our future mayor follows me on Instagram.

So this is huge for me.

Oh my God, I'm so jealous.

This is big.

Multiple friends have texted me like, how did that happen?

I'm like, don't worry about it.

These things happen.

So if you haven't heard, or if you have, Zaran Mamdani is an assembly member from Queens, New York, who identifies as a democratic socialist.

Politically, I'm really into his ethos.

I think it's a lot of progressive, left-leaning, forward-looking stuff that will really be helpful for the city and the people who live here.

I do not think we should have a mayor who's younger than me.

I don't know what we can do about it at this point.

So this is what happened, right?

In the late days of the primary election, we have have ranked choice voting in New York City.

And so it allows this kind of coalition building that is heretofore kind of only used to f over progressive candidates in New York.

And we flipped it on him or in America and we flipped it on him.

In the late days,

Mamdani cross-endorsed with comptroller Brad Lander and also former state rep Michael Blake for the purposes of defeating Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo did have experience as governor of New York State, which a lot of people liked, especially when they ignored that a lot of that experience was resigning in disgrace after being accused of sexual harassment by 13 women, which is what they call a groper's dozen,

and mismanaging government funds,

allegedly suppressing the number of COVID deaths in nursing homes.

And after all of this, Cuomo, like polls were coming out early this year of potential candidates, and Cuomo was way ahead in the polls until he announced his campaign.

And then the support rapidly started to slip away.

His big constituency seems to be people who think the mayor has to be the oldest Italian guy who is willing to do the job.

And that is a dwindling constituency.

And they got a new pope, you know.

So that guy is a busy.

We got a Chicago Pope.

They don't need the mayor of New York City anymore.

I just want to say, internationally, socialists everywhere, we're rejoicing.

We're putting up the marks bunting.

We're lighting the Christmas Lenins.

We're finally back.

Every time I say to myself, I don't want to get involved in electoral politics anymore.

He's rigged against the left.

He drags me back in.

This time, such a joy, such a joy.

And do you know what?

One of the biggest victories for socialists, in fact, genuinely the biggest victory for a socialist in 100 years in America.

And that means, you know, all the comrades are out tonight.

You've got the ghost of Eugene Debs rising up from the cemetery in Terre Haute, Indiana.

You've got Joe Hill, whose ashes, of course, are scattered across the United States, apart from the one state he didn't like, but I can't remember which one.

They're rising up.

And um it's absolutely thrilling to me it's thrilling and i do feel for the democratic establishment because obviously they despise the left um

and they spend a lot of time having to sort of navigate this path where they hate the left they want to destroy it but they need to pretend that they don't and they're part of it and um the problem they keep having is that material conditions do keep meaning that reality has a left-wing bias, which is unbearable for them.

And I remember, you know, there's this thing that everyone says, you know, when they're trying to get you as a leftist to vote for a centrist, this is a vote blue, no matter who.

You're going to vote blue no matter who.

And it's been very interesting to see people trying to alter the rhyme now, like vote blue no matter who, except Mamdani, because I cannot.

And unless it's Oran, who unfortunately has a lifetime barn, you know,

it's hard.

I'm not very good at writing short rhyming slogans, it transpires.

I think the heat wave, there was a heat wave on the voting deck, and I think that really helps because if it's hot outside, people are going to get more left-wing.

Didn't the Russian Revolution happen in one of the coldest places on earth?

You've got to count jackets when you're in total temperature.

That's how they did it.

But what it also says is I think I can see why.

The right wing of the Democratic Party is frightened.

I can see why, you know, the far right is absolutely losing their minds about this because obviously, if socialists can make it in New York, then they can make it anywhere.

It is like really wild to see the way Mamdani is being painted as a radical by just some of America's great racists and idiots.

Quote unquote, business leaders have opposed his wild plan to make buses free to ride for people in the city.

I think that's pretty deranged of him to suggest that people should get to go from place to place within the city.

And they have had

the good sense, these business leaders, not to say, what are you going to do next?

Make my limo free for me to ride.

But they unfortunately have gone straight for racism and Islamophobia.

This is such a classic when you get somebody who, yes, he is a socialist, but he is not the most radical person on earth.

He's just simply proposing.

some policies that would improve material conditions somewhat.

And it's like, we've got to such an extent that when somebody comes out like that, they have to be painted as Joseph Stalin himself.

Because if people actually get to hear what that person is saying, they'll like it too much and that's even on fox news they're like this guy wants to give people child care and even like the the everyone watching is like wait a minute we're supposed to be mad because of why like

you can't i'm not just gonna get mad because you say it matt also i'm so sick of being threatened with a good time you know they're always like this rampant communist is gonna absolutely destroy and then i read it and it'll be like I just think maybe minimum wage should be able to cover your bills.

And I'm like, ah.

And like, we should tax the uh income for the wealthy two percent more and people like that's who can afford it that's who should godzilla is ravaging the city oh my god in this small book

it is really i mean he's really spoken out for trans people he's like built this really great coalition of uh muslims and jews people keep asking him to denounce the the phrase globalize the intifada which is not a phrase he has used or does use and if you're going to ask ask people to denounce random strings of words that you just kind of like associate with them because of your own biases, I think we need to ask where Andrew Cuomo, where he stands on the phrase, that's a spicy meat to ball.

Or see if Donald Trump stands behind the expression, if there's grass on the field, play ball.

I do not think he'll be happy with the results.

Trump has said that Mamdani must, quote, behave or risk losing federal funding.

And we know he's young in his early 30s.

It's basically treating him like he's three,

not 33.

Behave.

Is that, I mean, this seems

the level of American politics we've talked about over the years with you, Josh, is this

all it's come to now is just the president saying, behave or else?

This is actually tragic because Donald Trump has, it seems like his mental faculties are declining because what he obviously meant to say is be white.

And he misspoke tragically and didn't say what he really meant.

And, you know, I just hope he's getting the care he needs.

I hope it was said in a more 1970s British campy way.

You know, oh, behave.

Oh, kind of in Austin Powers.

That's my frame of reference as an American.

Yeah, they cut the quote short.

It was actually, behave, sexy baby.

This is where Donald Trump chose to debut his Austin Powers impression.

The problem with headlines, they don't tell you tone of voice.

It's funny because I do appreciate that quite a lot of the right strategy is to boil people's piss and upset them.

And I do hate it.

I hate the politics that is based around just upsetting people.

But sometimes when we do it to them, it's really fun.

It is fun.

It is really

disgusting how racist and Islamophobic so much of it has been.

But it's so funny watching people

try to make him sound like uncool or like his idea.

It's like, it is like watching Elmer Fudd try to like turn the other loony dudes against Bug's body.

I think his answers to like kind of tough questions have been really thoughtful and warm and easy for people to understand.

And it's like nice that like.

one city in one election made a good choice.

We were talking before we started recording about my wife during big elections, national or local, just like goes to bed very early and is just like, oh, find out in the morning I can't vote more tonight.

what am i going to do and i got to come in and like wake her up with good news when i got into bed tonight and i was like i don't even know how to break good news anymore

well let's have some more uh more hopeful news now budapest pride update and um

uh to be honest uh hungary politically has not brought uh a a deluge of hope to uh to people who are not fans of, well, head case stroke so-called hardman leaders.

Victor Orban has a carefully curated reputation as one of modern Europe's foremost purveyors of bile-filled prejudice and hate-fueled divisionism.

But last weekend, an estimated 200,000 people converged on the Hungarian capital for Budapest Pride and extended the firmest and most rainbow-coloured of middle fingers to Victor Orban.

He has spent a disproportionate amount of his time clamping down on what people wish and choose to do in the privacy of their own lives.

And for whatever reason, his rollback of rights has not produced the economic miracle regrowth that it generally doesn't anyway.

He's been unlucky.

I mean all the economic figures suggest that clamping down on personal rights relating to sex, gender, sexuality and the like boosts GDP by between 100 and 1 million percent per week if you do the maths wrong and then make up a figure at the end.

So he's been a bit unlucky on that front.

The authorities attempted to stop the Pride march.

Hungarian police said it was illegal to attend the march, but the mayor of Budapest then loopholed the crap out of it

because municipal events don't require authorization.

So he basically made himself the organizer of the march, which made it legal.

And 200,000 people turned up.

20 EU governments signed a statement criticizing the attempted ban on the march.

Numerous political figures from across Europe joined in, and Orban was left pretending that the egg on his face was a trendy new cosmetic treatment to keep your skin looking fresh and smooth and unwrinkled.

If, like him, you spend 60 now a day scowling so um it's uh i mean it does feel like a genuinely hopeful moment in in and whether it turns proves to be a turning point or not generally hopeful moments turn out not to be quite the turning point more just like a a swivel that then kind of accelerates off with greater sort of centrifugal force uh but let's cling to it while uh while we can absolutely and i really can't wait for the film adaptation i just want to see the mayor saying

well unfortunately for you provincial events don't require a federal authorization.

So it looks like I'm the f ⁇ ing organizer now.

Stubbed out.

Picks up a tiny rainbow flag.

There's nothing you can do about it.

Victor, not this time.

Or ban, you can't ban it, I'm afraid.

I hope that this gives rise to at least one Hungarian-themed drag queen named Chikter Herbon.

Also, this is good news for me personally because I've always wanted to go to those swimming pools where old men play chess, but recently I felt like it would be unsavoury to put money into that economy.

I tried to do that, but my knights drowned and I lost.

And they drown in such a funny little way, don't they?

Forwards and then to the left.

Swim up, swim up.

Every time they swam up, they'd swerve.

Yeah, straight up.

You have to go straight up.

So, well, as I say, we'll see if this proves to be a turning point.

between the forces of distractive cantankerism, so it's all about and those who believe that maybe, just maybe, the world's problems are not all the fault of anyone who isn't immovably, irrepressibly heterosexual.

Who knows?

But in a world where hope is on the wrong end of a game of constant whack-a-mole, it was at least a moment of hopeful resistance.

And let us cling to that popsicle of optimism as we swelter in the sauna of populist regression.

Wealth news now, and well, the world is torn asunder by violence and hatred, but there is one unifying force that will always bring people together, and that is the force of love.

And nowhere was that put on show more gloriously than in the wedding of one of the world's richest people, annoying an entire Italian city.

Jeff Beasles and his, I think we can call, say, now, current wife, Lauren Sanchez,

sparked fury amongst Venetians with their, I think we can say a mildly over-the-top wedding.

And to raise interesting kind of philosophical questions looking at Jeff Beasles' wedding.

What is happiness?

What is love?

And if a billionaire gets married and it didn't cost him tens of millions of dollars and piss off an historic city, is it legally valid?

And I'm not sure there is a definitive answer to that question.

I'm not a lawyer or a billionaire or an Italian city.

And also, if one of the world's richest men gets married, can he ever truly, unquestionably, in a never-even thinking about it kind of way, know that his espoused is marrying him purely, 100% for love?

And there's only one way to find that out.

And he chose not to take that way.

And that way was to announce at the altar that he was giving away all of his money and see if she runs out of the church, goes straight onto the Pluto Catch wealth-based dating app and starts swiping around anyone with a net worth over 2.5 billion.

But he chose not to do that.

So he will never know.

He will never know.

Neither of you were there, were you?

Were you either of you invited?

I know what a clash with Glass and reviewed.

That's the thing I couldn't go in the end.

You had to RSVP Declines with Regret.

I'm so sorry.

I said, if only I could.

Declines with Regret is basically a brief history of Britain from

Declines with Regret is

my short book about how I was forced to learn grammar when I went to university.

For me, the most exciting thing about these things, because they're such like lavish spectacles, it's the

food, you know.

I don't know if you know, but I looked at the menu of what they had for the main dinner.

The starter was 100,000 otterland per guest.

You know, the birds that are so small that you shouldn't eat them because it offends God.

So everyone's necking 100,000 limbs of them covered in the veils.

Then they fling them off and they bring the main course.

Now, if it was a millionaire's wedding, you'd be having something like 420 blackbirds baked in a pie, but obviously scaled up to one of the richest men on earth.

That's going to be 4,200 million blackbirds baked in a pie.

And let me tell you something, Andy.

When that pie was opened, most birds really did begin to sing.

It was cacophonous.

Have you ever heard something like that?

No, you haven't, because you'll never be rich enough.

Luckily, Jeff Bezos, of course, he didn't hear it because all the guests who heard it were deafened.

That's part of the spectacle.

But luckily, Bezos, of course, he was hiding in the counting house, counting all his money.

His wife was in the parlor eating bread and honey.

Sadly, did not work out well for the maid who was, of course, in the garden hanging out her clothes.

I don't know if you know what it's like if 4,200 million blackbirds come and peck off your nose, but it didn't work well.

What I'm really aware of is that I don't think Josh has heard this nursery rice.

This is a classic nursery rhyme.

Birds of the pie, pies open, birds began to sing.

Dainty dish to step before a king.

Dainty dish to step before a king.

Or just kind of a garden variety all remark.

Yes, well, this is the thing.

It's the song of sixpence, but when you scale it up, it's no longer dainty.

We have to tax the rich until the dishes become dainty once more.

America dainty again.

Make blackboards 4 and 20 again.

And also what you'll get there is you'll get the weed contingent, you know.

They'll see that.

They'll be on board.

4 and 20 Blazebirds.

It was nice.

I don't think President Trump was there, but he did send Bezos the gift of passing a massively massively regressive tax package in the budget.

So that was really nice.

They might as well, instead of calling it the big, beautiful, one big, beautiful bill, they should call it the one big, beautiful Bezos wedding present.

And they had to move it.

There were protests all around in Venice.

They had to move it to a different location.

That's probably the best version of

if anyone sees a reason why these two should not be married, speak now or for revolting peace.

I'm showing up with dozens of people and they threatened to fill the canals with inflatable crocodiles, or as I would whimsically and inaccurately call them, can alligators.

Canalligator is actually a Canadian alligator.

That's why they've built that prison for them.

In other wealth news, the dreams of wealth were snatched away from thousands of people in Norway who were told that they'd won millions of kroner in a lottery, only for it to emerge that there had been a computer malfunction.

And instead of

when the prize money from the the lottery was converted from Euro cents to Norwegian kroner it was multiplied by a hundred instead of being divided by a hundred making the prizes 10,000 times more than what they were supposed to be

now I don't know if that makes you appreciate the one ten thousandth of what you thought you were getting more if you have your $25 figurine of a rabbit ski jumping.

Do you appreciate that more than you would have enjoyed the $250,000 scientific project to see if you could actually make rabbits ski jump to an Olympic level?

But that dream was ripped from you.

So do you look at your figurine of the ski jumping rabbit and think, no, this is better.

Now I appreciate the small things in life more.

I would say that this is very much a dolphin Brazilian butt lift issue.

They played at Glastonbury, I think.

They didn't.

I think they said some pretty offensive things.

What Norwegians don't realize is they've already won the lottery.

Like, they have the best quality of life of anyone on earth.

You know, like, oh no, I want to be able to renovate my winter house in the cabins up in north, which all of us have, you know?

Oh, no, my clothes made of such decent fabrics will now hang in a slightly inferior wardrobe.

Like, come on, give us a break, no way.

You're thriving.

Oh, if I didn't win so much lottery money, what will I do on my six weeks of vacation?

For Easter.

It is so funny how

people should be mad.

I would be mad too.

But it's so funny that whoever commissions

the lottery commission there, their job is to give away money and people are still furious at them.

Also, they're called the Norsk tipping board, which makes it just feel like they're just giving you a little, oh, just a little tip for you.

I thought in Norway, everybody won the lottery once a year.

I thought that was like part of the social safety net there.

I bet you, if you tallied up the current Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and you toted them out to everyone in the States,

you could probably give everyone just a nice little bump.

Yeah, I think that's not bad.

They could just do that.

It's allowed.

It is so funny because, Andy, I got to disagree with you.

All right.

I've got to offer a contrary point of view at least.

This is the most depressing way to find out you won the lottery.

And then go like, okay, you did win.

Yes.

And it's going to be a million dollars.

Psych 32.50.

And then you still have to be like that.

You can celebrate with a nice bottle.

Yes, you have to be like,

you can celebrate with a nice bottle of champagne if you kick in another $50 out of pocket.

I actually had an experience a bit like this where a very sweet great aunt of mine died and I'd really loved her.

And when she died, I found out I'd inherited a couple of thousand pounds.

I couldn't believe it.

I used it to make a feature from my friends.

I was so thrilled.

And me and my sister were like, wow, a great aunt has given us a couple of thousand pounds.

This is astonishing.

And then we found out that our cousins on the other side both inherited about £100,000.

And honestly, I didn't realize she fucking hated me.

Like, I think she liked me.

And also, that's the other thing.

We couldn't be ungrateful.

Like, it was still lovely of her to leave us money.

We didn't expect it.

And it's quite a lot of money.

But it was very, like, oh, well, that's great.

It was a very intense experience.

And I can give counseling.

This shows why this should be appraised and lauded, and ideally spread around the world.

Because this is, you know, the people of Norway have been given a valuable lesson in life.

It's basically just accelerating the process of what happens in a consumer capitalist democracy.

Basically being told you can have it all, or maybe not all, some.

You can have bits of some.

Well, theoretically, you could have had it all, but instead one individual is going to get the lot instead.

But don't give up that dream.

And that is a process that usually takes, you know, decades on an individual level, sometimes even a century on a national level.

And this has been efficiently condensed by this lottery blooper into one rapid-fire disappointment, one instant powdered anticlimax.

Just add the salt water of your own tears.

of how my how good it would have felt if they'd done it the other way though if they'd gone uh we're gonna give you seven kroner and then you go 700 all right that's not bad

i think that's how they should announce all lottery winnings going forward is they divide it by a hundred and they go ah we're just with you it's a hundred times more than that that's the best day of your life twice I should, that's how they should break medical diagnoses as well.

Go in, bake, and then, then, then just withdraw a little.

So you're going to have to amputate the arm.

No, okay, the finger.

Okay.

Okay.

Isn't that just right-wing political strategy?

That is what they do, isn't it?

Well, that brings us to the end of

this week's bugle.

Thank you very much for listening.

If you want to come and see my show at the Froom Festival on Monday, the 7th of July, then please do.

Details and tickets available on the internet.

josie anything to plug yes i'm doing the edinburgh fringe every single day at the pleasant time it's my show is called now is the time of monsters and it's about um parenting and climate change and politics and prehistoric extinct charismatic megafauna and there are tickets available uh the tickets are 10 000 pounds each psych they're like 10 pounds oh my god what a plug-in

um and uh yeah i think i think it should be fun josh yes i have a new stand-up special out it's on youtube currently on blonde Blonde Medicine's YouTube channel.

It is called Positive Reinforcement.

It just came out last weekend.

I'm like, people have been so lovely.

I would love if you watched it and spread the word.

It's like a very independent release that I just did with the little record label I work with.

And my wife, Maris Kreisman, put out her book today as of this recording.

It's called I Want to Burn This Place Down.

It's about kind of imagining a bigger, more

comprehensive way of being in the world that is good to people.

It's personal essays.

She's really brilliant and funny and warm and lovely.

And that it is good for our house's financial well-being if you purchase her book.

It's available wherever.

It's supportive, but it's also fiscally sensitive.

It's responsible.

It's just responsible.

And you can find out where I'm going to tour.

I'm going on the road a bunch.

I'm going to put the Catskills and I'm going to be back in Toronto at joshcondleman.com or joshcondleman.substack.com for my newsletter.

It's free every Monday.

It's called That's Marvelous and it's full of pep talks.

We will be back next week with Nish Kumar and Ian Smith.

Until then, Buglers, 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.