Too Much News - Bonus Edition

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, welcome to Bugle issue 4345, 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 Froom Festival on Monday, the 7th of July.

Also, new tour dates 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 than news that is actually currently happening.

First up, I spoke with Tiff Stevenson and Hari Kondabolu about Shock Horror, a possible female archbishop.

Well,

and a job that both of you might be interested in, actually, Hari, with

your past

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, chasible mitre, lightsaber, and inflatable cross and resigning as head of the Church of England.

And the current front-runner is the Bishop of Chelmsford, Julie Frances Decarney,

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, starting 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 archbishops 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 Canterbury.

Take care only, 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, something like that.

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.

Yeah, I mean, that's so.

I don't know if you're aware, um, Hari, but that is part of the reason the previous Archbishop of Canterbury had to step down.

Um, so I just think more women in positions of power every every everywhere.

Um, I 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 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 is for the Archbishop of Cadbury.

Then

I would be delighted.

I'm not exactly sure what religion that would be.

Would that be Christianity?

Why do they have the chocolate eggs?

I guess that's the question.

I think the religion would be pre-menstrual,

which is when I get my desperate need for chocolate.

So I think,

but I think the Archbishop of Cabarets would be a great, would be a great title to have.

If you get everything in chocolate, like you say, Andy, the scepter,

what do you get?

You know, if it was all chocolate and part of the being sworn in, I don't know if you get sworn in.

I can't, the church doesn't agree with swearing.

But, you know, like

part of you being, I was going to say, indoctrinated, that's probably the wrong word as well.

Anyway, sworn.

Yeah.

Part of it is you get the hat and then you get to eat the hat and then you get a, you know, a sword or a, you know, 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

the same old arguments over and over again.

I mean, the whole origin, as I said, it was a

philosophical, o-theologistical difference between Rome and London over whether or not Jesus was a British carpenter who could do your cupboard sometime next month and will 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 Archbishop of Chelmsford and Essex, and you think of the great Essex-based leaders, Graham Gooch, former England cricket captain, Alistair Cook, former England cricket captain, Johnny Douglas, former English captain.

I'm out after that.

I'm absolutely out.

She's the front runner, apparently, according to Ladbrooks,

which

I think is...

How addicted to gambling do you have to be to bet on that?

Oh, we you can bet on anything here.

Yes.

And also people in government have tried to when it's outcomes of who's going to be voted in in government.

So that's a problem.

Yeah.

You can vote on the new, you can, you can gamble on the, not vote, but you can gamble on who the new Doctor Who would be,

what the Brexit result would be.

It's, it's like we're a nation of we're obsessed.

You can still gamble on that, actually, but

because that still seems to be up in the air, 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 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, give us, 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 I 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.

Saying, all women, an all-female war effort is the best,

you know, most concise, effective, budget-friendly version of a bridge that's gone up.

Yeah.

And you compare that with an all-male infrastructure project, Stonehenge, still not finished.

Well, it's 5,000 years old.

Moving on,

Flying duck news now.

Well, 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-averse 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, sorry, also snapped a French chef on a bicycle with a carving knife and a string of oranges around his neck in hot pursuit.

Again, this is very worrying, even though the repercussions of this story obviously will not echo around the world.

But it's, you know, I mean, if ducks are not respecting the speed limits in Switzerland,

where for civilization now?

Caught doing a 52 and a 30.

I mean.

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, the goblin.

Seven years like.

But I don't believe it's the same duck.

It hasn't aged a day.

Like

what's this duck's beauty regime?

It must be swimming in all that algae.

Like, I don't know.

This duck looks snatched.

Jawlin's looking good.

The beak's looking shiny.

I don't, I don't believe it's the same duck.

Tiff Stevenson and Hari Kondabolu there.

Next up, we have James Nakise and 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 was when he was born, which I think makes him a Valentine's baby.

But look, don't think about that too much.

It's not our business.

But it's his official birthday

in New Zealand

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

so as it gets cold and we cover up we think of England and we go oh it's it's it's 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 to New Zealand if we if we get central heating the all blacks will never win a World Cup again

that's that's right you don't need central heating 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's an official birthday that's different in different countries 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 Queen Victoria's birthday, she was born on May the 24th of 1819.

So, someone's mummy and daddy got very excited by the result of the August 1818 general election.

In Australia, it's mostly the second Monday in June, but Western Australia and Queensland can't be asked with that.

So, they give the

birthday later in the year, whenever they can be asked.

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 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,

obviously,

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 threw the rope.

I just thought I put £200

to the HMRC every month just because I know I'm going to be late.

I mean, look, there's also some deciding factors like I'm fucking disorganized.

But

every year, I'm 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 honors 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 sport, 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.

I'm sure you've been here.

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'd heard the wave was coming.

I heard the wave was coming, and I was like, I got to get out of my shop.

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, should 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 hotly contested title these days.

But thanks to science, that much maligned niche hobby of the increasingly marginalised 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 hoped, 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 you know pens uh and and paper yeah 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 for hiv

um 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 judic 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

it's, I hope I've explained the medical science of it there.

It was like being dropped into the middle of an episode of Gray's Anatomy.

It was just amazing.

They created a new lipid nanoparticle that will 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.

They were wrong.

I walked so the people at the Peter Daugherty Institute for Infection and Immunity could run, my friends.

And

I think we all know that the R there in Peter is doing a lot of work because the Pete Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity

is an entirely different organization.

So it looks like, listen, we don't know how far how how much the progress is going to be over in this next few years, but they seem extremely excited about 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.

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

SPDs.

Whoop!

Whoop, whoop.

The report was several hundred pages of medical and scientific jargon that I found very hard to understand, but but it did culminate in the words, seriously, just trust us on this one.

I don't care what you read on the internet, uh, on that internet chat room, we are genuine scientists, we know what we're doing.

But whether that's enough to win over the sceptics

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 need a bracing pick-me-up whilst falling asleep whilst recording a podcast.

All right, that's better.

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 strained relationship for

some

well, literally strained relationship for quite a long time.

Bring us up to date with the latestness between humans and tea.

Yes, Andy, it is all on apparently

matcha stocks are running low.

Tea is a calming beverage, 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, alpha bro 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 not 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 calls Sting.

That was

a joke about Sting.

Well, it's always nice to leave a podcast with a sting in the table.

I do think we can connect this to a previous story, though.

Okay, yeah.

We think that you know, sinking cities is necessarily a bad thing.

If Uji, the matcha capital, matcha 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.

Oh,

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 f with.

He has 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.

Ephemeroths?

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, 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, it's seen as a sort of further example of the sort of excesses 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,

you know, there's other cities that have set an example to Venice

and haven't become the tourist hotspots that Birmingham, for example.

Birmingham has

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 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, you know, this, 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, gondolaing to work every day, barely able to eat an ice cream without someone bursting into a chorus of just one cornetto.

Like, I think,

I mean,

I mean,

you can be against the people who are having their wedding there, but, you know, 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 a henu in Paris, Lauren Sanchez.

Well, they say she had a henu, but we know what actually happened.

She had a hen do in space a couple of months ago because Blue Origin, that flight, was definitely a henu because they had their makeup done before

they went up there.

There were terrible karaoke renditions in space, courtesy of Katie Perry.

It was definitely a henu 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 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 hear 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.

There is no room for tourism.

We can stand against it, right?

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, okay?

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, yeah?

Stop xenophobia, start tourismophobia, okay?

These fing weirdos in their Hawaiian t-shirts and their big maps, get the f out of here.

And the great thing about this is that when you tell a tourist to go back to where they came from, they do.

Everybody's

You should have seen 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, Majorca, 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 hop on a bikini and join in.

Like, go home, tourist, while eating a Calippo.

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 protests over the weekend in which protesters fired water pistols at tourists.

I think what might be

the most 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-off bus ride of existence?

No.

And

again, Barcelona, I've been to Barcelona, I've been to Venice, I mean, 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 go to them.

And the problem is that

there's nothing inherently wrong with tourism in itself.

It's just the way that the free markets have,

well, as previously discussed, they do not always throw their darts into the trouble 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 fing beach holiday and evolved its way out of the sea.

And since then, we've just not been able to shake that little

sort of, you know, evolutionary echo from

our minds.

But I mean, 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 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 it 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, man.

See grass.

You just have, oh my god, you haven't seen grass.

I'm embarrassed for you.

Comes back with that accent.

Oh,

Barcelona.

I think I pronounced it wrong, you know.

Sorry, I pronounced it tolerably.

Sometimes it's quite hard to take people wrong.

Well, I think tolerably is a that's a that's a little tourist village outside Barcelona.

Fake emergency news now.

Now, obviously, as we've discussed, there are a lot of genuine emergencies around the world, but uh 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,

quotes, 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, in the numerous civil wars that we used to have, where towards the end of a day's battle, if neither side were winning, each team's musicians with their various horns and

lutes would form a supergroup at the side of the battlefield and play what passed the dance floor bangers back in the day.

And 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, you know, it's a part of our history and our heritage.

But, I mean, this could signal the end of the great British mosh pit.

The mosh will never end, Andy.

The mosh will never end.

My favourite thing about a mosh is that there's always a mosh pit admin.

There's a lot of admins surrounding a mosh pit that people don't realise, but there's always someone who sort of organizes it and holds everyone back until the appropriate moment to mosh.

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 minimise 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 a 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 in a, you know, calling my doctor because my

Apple Watch has freaked out at my heart rate during intercourse, you know, 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.

I'll keep watching it, but it makes me so angry.

And I think this is

what have we made smart tech for, if not this?

I just love it.

How bleak is post-Brexit 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 at download.

So it's very specifically at download festival.

So like a latitude, I don't think anyone's in danger of

getting taken out in a mosh.

Yes.

Unless you count.

Well, I mean, you say that, Tiff, but there have been similar alerts triggered.

For example, 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 permafrozen by an escaped ice-blasting super villain.

So, yeah, they are,

you know, it 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, actually, shout out to David Quirk, wonderful Australian comedian who I saw in a gig recently.

He's wonderful, he was having a tough time.

And on stage, you just said, Is everybody okay?

Is anybody okay?

But yeah, that just shows where technology is.

That

wearable tech assumes

that humanity must be involved in some kind of

absolutely harrowing disaster rather than be simply rocking out to some thrash core, metal bot, bone jangle, bass whamp, drum blast, brain grunger, heavy blast, wackity 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 Gonrelman 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.