Musk Mess Masked by Massive Madman

The Bugle, Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 4344 of the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann here once again in the shed of Immutable Truth.

And I'm joined from various parts of the universe from Australia by Alice Fraser.

Hello, Alice.

Hello, Andy.

How are you going?

I am going adequately, which in this millennium I'll take, frankly.

I'll take.

I've taken it in the last millennium as well.

I've been organizing my Swiss writers' retreats and putting, drawing pictures of houses and writing people's names into rooms and assigning people spaces, which is like playing dolls, but for

adult social dynamics, which are way more complex.

Also, joining us from Dublin, Ireland, well, it's a man who's just claimed he's one of the world's leading footballers, and he's about to explain why.

It's Neil Delamere.

So, hello, first of all.

I have, your shed always has sporting memorabilia behind, and it's usually cricket nonsense, right?

I have a jersey with

my name on it because I agreed last week to play in a charity football match with a lot of comedians and actors against a Premier League legends team.

Now, normally, these would have one person who was once in the Premier League.

Okay, their starting team, however, was Ryan Giggs, Karl Poborsky,

Jason McIntyre, Keith Gillespie, Jermaine Pennant, Clayton Blackmore,

Dimitar Barbertoff, and Stillian Petrov.

That's who their team had.

Our team had gout.

And I'm not even joking.

We had gout, and we had a guy who had gout, and we had a guy who had cerebral palsy.

And we played against these guys, and they were absolutely unbelievable.

They scored on us when we played three goalkeepers

at one point.

We had 25 players against their 11.

But I thought I would show you that I am truly an athlete at this point.

Right.

Well,

that's good.

So now is there going to be a second leg?

No, I don't, I don't think there is.

There was a moment where the ball went by me, and I thought this is my moment, this is my moment.

But I had not realized since the last time I played football that aliens have put my head into a much slower man's body.

I didn't even realize that that was possible as a thing.

I remember starting running in May.

That's all I remember.

And I think I got to the ball by June or June.

But it was an amazing experience.

So thanks very much.

And it was all for charity.

That's good.

I mean,

they're all good, these charity sporting events, just to remind you how unbelievably shit you are at school.

Oh, my God.

But I had it.

But I mean, I thought about it.

I thought, I'm going to run at gigs.

I'm going to run at him.

He's not going to expect that.

I'm going to run at him full tilt.

And then at the last minute, I'm going to introduce him to my brother's wife.

I just thought, damn, that's a tactic.

I mean, he cannot resist the sister-in-law.

He cannot resist.

Well, I've never been asked to play a charity

sporting event of any kind.

And arguably, that's either because I'm not as famous as you guys or because if I was to play a charity sporting event, people would think that I was the charity.

Well, I did.

uh charity boxing um

i got i got a draw with money pacquiao over uh 15 bare knuckle rounds.

I didn't want to make a fuss about it.

But, you know,

we do what we can.

A lot of people would say that

matchup would be deeply unfair because

you would be much heavier than Manny Pacquiao.

Yep.

Well, true, but

he'd had more practice than me.

But even though, that's a great thing, isn't it?

I beat Lance Armstrong in a bike race as well, but only because he was disqualified.

We are recording on the 9th of June.

Tomorrow, the 10th of June is apparently National Herbs and Spices Day.

And so we've gone through the recently discovered herbs and spices that have been added to the

sum of human herb and spice knowledge.

And when I say herbs, America, I mean herbs.

Herbs.

There's a fucking H on the beginning.

And spices.

No, no real gribe with how you pronounce that.

What are we doing first?

Are we going to go to Scarborough Fair?

No, well, these wonderful new spices that have been discovered.

Griffin weed, which is slightly hallucinogenic if added to the right bolognese.

Cock weasel, it's a useful alternative to ground pepper, albeit with powerfully laxative after effects.

Bladderwort, it's a herb that grows only in hedges by trunk road, similar in taste to a cross between tarragon, scotch bonnet, and off-milk, with an inescapable aftertaste of diesel.

Clatch, which is seaweed-like but from land and contains toxins that cause pronounced swelling of facial features for up to three months, but is delicious in melted butter and inexpensive if stolen.

And Mielle de Oaisoc, ironically named spice from Oaisoc, an uncharted area of rural France.

This distinctly unhoneyish chili alternative was reportedly used by prehistoric peoples to tranquilize bison so they would stand still for the bison painters to keep running in and out of their caves to take a look at the bison whilst trying to capture the true essence of bisonhood on a cave wall, yet a fking again.

Mield de Waisot was also used as a performance-enhancing substance in 13th century athletics, most notably by the Duc de Floyance, when he allegedly ran a mile in two minutes, 13 seconds, before vomiting uncontrollably for a week, howling like a wolf for a further week, then barricading himself in his castle for 40 years.

Do not use before midday.

Also, spices that are being celebrated today, the spice melange from the book Dune, which allows you to see through time,

And also Spice Minage, which is where you take six people in unhappy marriages, they all snort a line of pepper and then f.

Family show.

Family show.

As always.

Some sections of the bugle are going straight in the bin.

This week, we have a special pullout on the leading TikTok influencer of the week.

This week, because we we love to keep our finger on this particular pulse, we have OEJ Gorilla Gorilla.

Sorry, Naughty Japes.

There's two ape emojis in his name.

Anyway, Naughty Japes is

sprung to prominence as a crime-normalizing TikTok hype fluencer whose nano films have inspired a global generation of law-breaking hoodler.

And Naughty Japes's latest contributions to the sum of human anti-establishmentarianist happiness include a video of him going into a supermarket, loading up a trolley with food from the grocery house, then affixing four military attack drones to the corners of the trolley, climbing into the trolley, lifting off from the floor, firing a rocket through the ceiling of the supermarket, and flying out without paying for his fruit, veg, and suspiciously prominently placed processed meat snacks.

Also, as I have the latest video, and bear in mind these are all no more than three and a half seconds long, it shows him avoiding fares on public transport by dressing as the Grim Reaper, waiting for a frail-looking octogenarian to toddle towards the ticket barriers, then scuttling through after them, leaving any tickets off wondering what they actually just saw and thinking it was probably something to do with their own lack of sleep or questionably sourced herbal tea rather than the criminal act of fair dodging also we see naughty japes stealing a commercial airliner by using an air of confidence and some fake ID to access the pilot's lounge at the airport then hypnotizing an actual pilot with a classic swinging pocket watch on a chain maneuver then filming filming himself in the cockpit of the airliner wearing a Batman outfit saying letter Rip Robin to an excited looking co-pilot People are so, it's amazing how easily these people do these things.

And finally, we see naughty japes selling arms to terror groups by posing as a genuine despot from a trading partner nation and

convincing a Western government minister that there is a genuine rebellion that needs crushing, buying £5.4 billion worth of munitions on a pear-you-use basis, then flogging them off to currently low-profile terror organisations in hilarious hidden camera deals.

So, some wonderful work from naughty japes that we commemorate in this week's section in the bin.

Also, in the bin this week, we bring you the best noises made by people watching the French Open final between Carlos Alcaraz and Yannick Sinna yesterday,

which was a truly extraordinary match lasting more than five hours won by the brilliant young Spaniard.

And the noises people made while watching it include, ooh, geez, joauci, wah,

shoof, and yeah,

that's uh, also, and those are just the commentators.

Uh, that's also in the bin.

Top story this week.

American president doing the kind of thing and using the kind of words that an American president would do and use in a TV drama in which America has been taken over by fascist news now.

Sorry, update rather than re-updated update news.

We've got there in the end.

And well, this is Los Angeles, the city of Angels, also the city of the latest evidence of Trumpistian despotary.

um in response to uh protests uh in uh in la

uh about the the uh the treatment of uh of immigrants uh donald trump has um essentially militarized california he's he's federalized the the national guard in an act without precedent for decades in uh in uh in in america and um i mean in terms of uh you know quelling concerns um at neil and alice about uh about the fact that he is

essentially a Nazi despot

dressed as a 21st century pumpkin.

He's not sort of quelling those concerns with the way that

he's going about it.

California Governor Gavin Newsom called the deployment of troops purposefully inflammatory, which I think Trump probably took as a compliment.

Personally, inflammatory is the brand of bronzer he uses.

So it's basically he's decided to send in the National Guard to quell these anti-anti-immigration raid protests.

And Hegzeth is threatening to send in the Marines, despite the fact that the Los Angeles Police Department has said that the demonstrations in the city have remained mostly peaceful.

ICE has been bundling people into unmarked bands and refusing to show ID during arrests, which has also apparently inspired a bunch of cosplayers to intimidate and kidnap people they perceive as potentially illegal immigrants.

And there's people who are protesting ICE enforcement sweeps and deportations without due process.

So let's just clarify.

This is arguably unlawful deployment of military force to enforce peace on peaceful protests over illegal arrests of illegal immigrants, right?

Yes, I think that's the only thing that's important.

Yeah, bearing in mind that the entirety of America's service industry is based on the underpaid labor of people willing to work for less than minimum wage.

And I'm not entirely sure the Republicans are fully across what it will look like when all that work is being done by resentful 13-year-olds.

This could possibly get worse as well, because as you said, Pete Hagsett, who is the controversial hardline defense secretary, a man completely unsuited to being a defense secretary, not so much a square peg in a round hole as a complete ring piece in a pentagon.

He

has raised the possibility of deploying the U.S.

Marines on the streets, as you said.

Now, the only good thing about that is that we will have plenty of notice and plenty of warning because we are all in his WhatsApp group.

Whether you need to know this or not, you'll be at Tesco and the signal chat will pop off and you'll know to get your relatives out.

Now, when you watch this kind of LA coverage,

you kind of bring your own sensibilities to it, I think.

So, like, if you're from a totalitarian regime and you see troops in the street, you think, I've seen this story before.

Whereas if you're like a UK pensioner affected by the winter fuel allowance tobacco, you're like, ooh, I wonder how long a car does burn for.

That's quite interesting, actually.

That could be a source of lovely winter heat.

Protesters blocked the main artery through the city, which I always think sounds like the most basic road in the US as well.

Like, what are you working on?

I mean, that's freeway 101.

That is freeway.

Completely simple.

The LLPD

said that they had it handled.

They didn't want any help, as we've said.

Chips, the California Highway Patrol, were responsible for the actual freeway itself.

They were involved in marshalling protesters away.

The National Guard were involved.

And they fired tear gas.

They fired rubber bullets and flashbangs in between them to clear the road.

And you just think that is why Extinction Rebellion did not take off in the US.

I will glue myself to the M25 in London.

I will happily glue it because you will not hear.

Get on the ground.

Bang, bang, bang.

You'll hear.

Please, sir.

Stay still and let the solvent do its job.

That's all you're going to hear on the M25.

I don't know if you've ever been to your gas, which I know's a weird way to start a conversation, but I have.

Have you?

Well, did the cricket pop off, did it?

Did the Surrey Massive suddenly get the ultras out, did they?

It wasn't.

That was actually

a long time ago when I was about 12.

I was.

I mean, this sounds implausible, but I was on a rock band tour of France.

Everything about that sentence is implausible.

Everything.

Was it a tear gas, or did you walk through quite a fruity department store and there was your perfume counter popped off and 12-year-old Landy lost his mind?

So

after the tour opening concert in possibly Grenoble, I can't quite remember.

And this was a band of

sort of private schoolboys aged sort of 10 to 13 touring France, doing covers of 60s and 70s rock songs that our music teacher liked.

And

some of the.

I mean, you cannot call that rock and roll, Andy.

That is

dry grinding against some of the sheets.

Some of the terminology is load-bearing.

I was on a rock tour of France, Alice, and don't you forget it.

All this tells me is that you have always been 45.

You care about

how you were 45 years of age.

Absolutely.

As long as I stay that way, then I'm happy with that, to be honest.

Now it's starting to work for me.

So what I'm gathering from this story is you did rock and roll and the crowd tearcassed you.

Yeah, basically.

Then, well, it wasn't the crowd.

It was, I think, it was a sort of after party, which was as rock and roll as an after party for a load of privately educated 10 to 13 year old British kids in France would be.

And some local kids came in, I think they tried to steal some snacks and soft drinks.

And when they were ushered out, then sprayed sort of tear gas into the room.

So I was tear gas

in a rock and roll scenario, but the details of that are in France.

The details of that are, you know,

do raise into question some of the terms.

That reminds me of the time that I didn't go to a strip club with the Harvard crocodillos.

Anyway,

I went to the Champions League final, and they

also in France, they seem to be a bit tear gas happy in France.

And they tear gas at people like maybe 20 or 30 yards in front of us.

But what they did, and it's terrifying, but what they didn't realize that my friend Tim McGarry

grew up in North Belfast in the 70s, and he laughed in their face.

We all had tears in our eyes, but Tim's were from nostalgia, men.

How do we get on to Tegas?

Yeah, because the LFED and the National Guard used it.

By the way,

they burned out and hijacked driverless cars.

Surely hijacking a driverless car takes all the fun out of it.

Surely it's really like who do you point your gun at?

You just point it at the dashboard with the computer going, you're going to take me exactly where I need to be taken.

And it's like, that is the idea.

Like, it's just kind of.

If romance novels have taught me nothing, and I think from this book, it's clear that they have taught me nothing.

It's that you only hijack a car if you're intending to fall in love with the person driving the car over the course of a quite fraught road trip.

100%.

That's how I met Andy.

That's supposed to be our special secret.

So Trump said

on Sunday, we have violent people and we are not going to let them get away with it.

I think you're going to see some very strong law and order.

And now, buglers, I have a challenge for you.

Just try to think about those words.

Maybe even repeat them to yourselves.

Say them out loud, even.

Hit into the mirror.

Without thinking...

of the January the 6th insurrection and without remembering that Trump released hundreds of people responsible for that assault on law and order and without giggling at the naked priapic hypocrisy of it.

You can't do it, can you?

You can't do it, Bugles.

I'm going to give you five minutes to try and do it.

You can't.

Come back in five minutes.

We're just going to talk about the rock tour of France in the meantime.

So essentially, what we had here was it was

an awkward situation in Los Angeles.

And Trump, in the famous words of Simon and Garfunkel,

like a bridge made of feral rhinoceroses, cesium-coated warheads and powdered piranhas over troubled waters, harumphed into the situation with the sole express purpose of making a tense but manageable situation into something furious and chaotic.

Um, and uh has done so quite effectively, to be fair.

He, um, in one of his social media messages, uh, stroke official communications, I think they're basically the same now, uh, he, as he tends to said, concluded, make America great again with three exclamation marks.

Now, I'm never a fan of the exclamation mark, as you would know buglers if you've ever read the full transcript of the bugle.

I think there have only been two or three in more than

600 odd episodes now.

Three exclamation marks.

Well, one, I would say if you use one, that's to highlight a humorous quirk or a quip.

Two, signifies absurdity and or nonsense.

Three, it just sounds sarcastic, frankly.

If you're using three exclamation marks, that is basically a way of communicating sarcasm.

He called Gavin Newsome Gavin News scum.

So essentially, basically, as president, he has become at the the same level to a snickering, sweat-covered, below-the-line anonymous, peeve-mongering purveyor of barely entry-level snivel gripe.

And, you know, that is just the world.

That is just the world that we live in.

So anyway.

Well, to be fair, Andy, he does need to send the army in in order to distract from his ongoing feud with Elon Musk, I think.

Yes.

Well.

to reclaim the news cycle, as it were.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, Andy, before we get on to the Elon Musk-Donald Trump fight, I want to, I think we need a content warning, and it would be irresponsible to continue without one.

There is as much as three to 24 hours between us writing these jokes and recording them.

Between recording and getting the show up, occasionally 10 to 12 hours, depending on editing speed, upload schedule.

By the time you, the listener, are actually listening to this material, the situation on the ground will have materially changed to the point where this hitherto a news satire podcast has functionally become a historico-satirical reminiscence of news gone past, where we sigh humorously about the good old days where there was news yesterday or this morning when Elon Musk wasn't riding a man dressed as a horse, dressed as Donald Trump over a flaming pit full of burning Tesla shares before Donald Trump fires the White House Tesla into space.

I just want to say we are aware making these jokes now that whatever you're hearing, everything will have gone horribly wrong since then.

And this will seem like, oh, remember how great it was back when it it was just impeachment and bitter acrimony.

When you say the good old days, I think maybe the good old hours should now be the price.

If you're listening now, Buglers, it's amazing that those were Alice Fraser's last ever words

in many, many ways.

Shortly afterwards, she was put into the boot of a Tesla and driven away.

Well, just saying that, like, one day now is like seven weeks in dog years, which is a thousand eons in American turbo-fueled social media meme lord troll king politics.

As such, you know,

we'd have to work so much harder.

Yeah.

Listen, we're going to have to upgrade it.

It's not four seasons anymore.

I mean, there's way more going on.

It's just ridiculous.

Yeah.

Finn, sit back down there.

Write harder.

By 6 p.m.

tomorrow, Trump will announce that not only have they reconciled Elon Musk's about to impregnate him with their first child.

people thought that elon musk would genuinely go all the way to the end of a second trump presidency but he lasted six months

who could have foreseen that my friends an electric vehicle maker not going on as long as it's stated range who

who could have spotted that

Yes, I mean,

it's been a

fascinating few days.

And already nominated for Celebrity Breakup of the Year, inevitability of the decade, megalomaniacal dickswingers, metaphorical wang fight of the year, and harrowing endoscopy into the diseased bowels of American politics of the week.

So lots of nominations for the Trump-Musk

feud.

I was recording the news quiz last Thursday, and while we were recording, Elon Musk

tweet-exed that

Donald Trump was in the Epstein files.

I assume not relating to the sculptor Jacob Epstein.

I don't know if Trump had bought one of his

rather elegantly made

sculptures, but to which everyone responded when Musk basically said, oh, Trump's implicating the Epstein files.

Everyone said, yeah.

But

why did you need to say everyone had just assumed that to be a pure, unadulterated fact?

One of the few facts of the millennium

so far.

Trump has warned Musk of very serious consequences if he backs the Democrats at some point in the future.

Like you say, I mean,

it's not really worth looking at the things that have already been threatened, counter-threatened, the bitch and counter-bitch of the breakup so far.

When

even during the course of this sentence,

something else will have materialized.

Well, I mean, there was this whole thing where Trump was threatening to cancel the space program, and Elon was like, fine, then, I'll take the Dragon spaceships back right now.

And I I mean, you wouldn't want to be an astronaut right now.

But the ways

you see all the people online having their say, the ways in which people have been discussing this whole fight are frankly insulting to teenage girls who are infinitely more competent at psychosocial warfare, PR management, and bitchy gossip forms.

A teenage girl can ruin your life just by a well-timed,

okay.

I think

we shouldn't focus on how bad these men are at fighting, but I think the really extraordinary thing is how helpless everyone else in the world feels to refute the central premise which is underlying all of these threats, which is that these two men have the right to cancel the space program or infrastructure projects or increase or drop the amount of money the nation takes from the ultimate wealthy or, you know, how much money is worth in your pocket in order just to ruin some other

day.

It's an extraordinary thing.

I'm just so glad Teenage Alice never saw Teenage Andy's

tour of France because

her review would be worse than the tear gas.

Okay.

Would have been horrendous.

You know, if you were having a row and the Russian government has taken the piss out of the fact that you're having a row, you know that you've done something wrong.

The senator who once ran Russia's space program wrote, if you encounter insurmountable problems in the US, come to us, Elon.

Don't be upset.

I mean,

I wouldn't get too cocky, Mr.

Former heads of the Russian space programme.

The Russian space programme exists only so Vladimir Putin can throw people out of slightly higher windows.

That's the only reason.

We're out of the Earth's gravitational pull.

Time for the accident.

The Kremlin, the Kremlin bureaucrats,

they can't understand that there could be a row between Musk and Trump.

They're like, what do you mean the country's richest man and the country's authoritarian leader are two different

people?

But like, it's like Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

They're not really different people, are they?

Even Medvedev got involved with his little comments, little his little bitchy comments.

This is the dude who was the president when you know who couldn't be the president.

Like, he didn't make any of his own decisions.

He was fully Jim Henson by Vladimir Putin.

He was full.

I think I didn't, I haven't fully looked into it, but I think that Rod Hull was forced to live in Moscow between 2008 and 2012.

Get back in your box, man.

Well, he said,

well, taking a short break from supporting a genocidal murderer to have a quip on social media, we are ready to facilitate the conclusion of a peace deal between Donald and Elon for a reasonable fee and to accept Starlink shares as a payment.

Don't fight, guys.

And

I mean, that is.

I think when you think about the world that has created that specific social media message, I think that almost encapsulates every single failing of humanity from the moment we evolved

into our own species.

Yeah, I mean, there's

you could write

encyclopedias about everything that is wrong with that.

Well, it's not happening without damage.

Elon Musk's net worth dropped by about $34 billion

in one day, but he still has $35

billion left.

I think the problem here when people say, oh, Elon Musk's lost money, is that people don't really have perspective on how much more than a million a billion is.

It's so much more that if you had $1.1 billion and you lost a billion dollars, you would still have $100 million.

I do like

when you see people and

they're trying to figure out based on on the tweets whether to buy or sell tesla shares and like oh musk is leaving doge oh i'm gonna hold on to the shares oh musk has had a row with donald trump uh i better sell the shares and then they're like uh musk has called him a paedophile and you're like

why don't

what the buy a bouncy castle so i why don't i want to buy like it's just insane it's wonderfully petty Trump is now going to sell the White House Tesla.

Have you seen this?

Yes.

He's going to sell it.

If ever there was a man in the world that I would not buy a used car from,

it is Donald Trump.

Can you imagine having any of his cars?

Like, the mirrors would face you, you wouldn't be able to move them.

You just

faced on you.

There'd be scratch marks in the boot from where Melania tried to get out.

There'd be

bronzer on the headrest.

The sunroof wouldn't work because that's welded shut on day one.

And it would just veer to the right, just massively veer to the right, constantly, over and over and over.

Well, you mentioned

the falling value of Tesla.

Tesla's sales have been tanking worldwide, down over one-third in the UK alone.

And it has sparked rumours that Elon Musk could soon be voted out as Elon Musk, and someone else will have to become Elon Musk at some point in the next few months.

So it would be quite interesting to see how that pans out.

I guess the problem for Tesla is that, as we reported a few weeks ago in our capacity as the world's leading economic journal of record, consumers are now slightly put off by the sense that what once was a futuristically exciting step into a technological wonderscape that was well worth looking a bit of a tool for, owning a Tesla, has become the 2020s equivalent of driving a swastika car, the controversial swastika-shaped automobile with swastika-shaped wheels that briefly dominated the domestic car sales market for Nurse Sades in mid to late 1930s Germany.

If I put an N, Chris, on the front of that word,

Nurse Sadie, that covers us legally, doesn't it?

Sure.

Yeah, go right.

Okay, well, let's.

Oh, the rumple of the Bailey meets Ali McBeal there.

In other

Trump news, this is very concerning for you,

Neil.

Trump has added Ireland to

his trade

blacklist.

Ireland could, reading between the lines, be banned from the USA entirely.

All people with Irish names, connections, and family could be rounded up and sent to New Zealand, I reckon.

The US could invade Ireland within a week and drag the Republic across the Atlantic through the Panama Canal and up the coast to replace the Querilus California.

Guinness in the USA could be forced to have 90% white and 10% non-white balance to satisfy the desires of the Trumpian regime.

And the famously snake-free country could be filled with American snakes as part of the reprisals.

How is Ireland coping with this, its newfound status?

Yeah, so we're on this trade blacklist because we have such a massive trade surplus with the U.S.

Now, I'm not saying that we don't believe Donald Trump is going to do anything about this,

but this was announced, this was just announced, and the Irish Stock Exchange then hit world record highs on Friday.

World record highs.

That is a whole country going, sure, you'll do your tariffs.

Oh, you're a big, brave boy.

You are a big, brave boy, aren't you?

You bump back down, you big tackle.

Oh, you're so cute when you're mad.

No, I mean, I don't w what we're worried about.

Well, first of all, we're in the tariffs situation now.

The tariffs in the EU are currently in the ninety day pause period, right?

Which is uh that's up on July the ninth.

I know what you're thinking.

July the ninth, he's not going to restart them on July the ninth.

What?

On Paolo Di Canio's birthday?

On the feast of the

on the feast of the martyred saints saints of China, 124 years to the day after Barbara Cartland was born.

Are you insane?

Are you insane?

Now, if listeners are listening to this podcast and haven't lost the will to live, at this point, they're going, who is Barbara Cartland?

Well, Barbara Cartland is the second greatest romance novelist of all time.

What we're very worried about actually here is if they do tariffs, if they genuinely get around to tariffs on the pharmaceutical industry, Ireland exported 44 billion quids worth of pharmaceuticals to the US last year, and most of that was Elon Musk's personal supply.

But even so,

we make a huge amount of chemicals here.

Did you know that all of the Botox in the world is made in Westport and County Mayo?

All of it.

Oh, that would raise my eyebrows, but it can't.

You look surprised if you could boost your fist.

Yes,

but like, there are people that trump needs to be scared of like he needs to be scared of the the chinese government he needs to be chairs scared of the international bond market but also if you think the kardashians are going to take this sort of stuff lying down you've got another thing coming they will mobilize not the faces but they will mobilize

First they came for the Botox and I said nothing because I did not use Botox.

And then they came for the fillers, etc., etc., etc.

But yeah, we are a little bit worried that if if that comes to pass right we're

and then they came for the boner pills and i couldn't come at all um

it's it's so peculiar despite people's very uh kindly meant 30 post blue sky explainer threads donald trump still sams seems to have a very strange idea about what a trade surplus actually means the idea that you you have to have an exactly equal exchange of goods at all times it's like if you if you're a man and you have penetrative sex sex with someone and then you insist that they insert exactly one and a half tablespoons of their bodily fluid into your body in return, just to equalize the balance.

It's not

how it works.

He's a prince of whales.

He could do what he wants.

Humanity literally sinking news now.

And

Alice, you are our urban

de-elevation correspondent.

And it turns out that cities are sinking.

Not all of them, but many of them are, well, heading headfirst towards the center of the world.

It's unclear whether this is caused due to physical issues of buildings being

sort of undermined

or if it's just cities seeking refuge from reality by burying themselves underground.

Can you enlighten us at all?

Yes, Andy, this is great news for people living on high floors who are very afraid of heights.

According to a recent study by Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, 48 coastal cities across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas are sinking at alarming rates.

It's also good news for clouds with sensitive skin due to skyscrapers becoming increasingly less capable of scraping the sky.

I feel like this, this obviously, as with all of these kinds of science publications, they say alarming rates.

You know, there could be some sort of exaggeration, but I feel if you told me any city was sinking at any rate, I'd be pretty alarmed.

Cities,

I might be on an outlier here, but cities aren't meant to sink, Andy.

I wouldn't be alarmed if you told me 48 coastal boats were sinking at alarming rates, even though boats aren't meant to sink.

It's sort of more in their remit.

Like you can conceive of them

thinking, Apparently, it's a combination of rising sea levels due to badly distributed wetness, plus sinking land due to badly distributed wetness.

It's a double whammy.

The water is not being where it's supposed to be.

Apparently, 76 million people are living in these areas that are sinking more than...

more than one centimeter a year.

Although the real MVP of the sinking is Tianjin in China, which is sinking up to 18.7 centimeters a year.

A lot of people are being forced to evacuate.

Some locals are refusing to leave because they can't sell their houses and are needing a little bit of education in sunk cost fallacy.

Sorry, it's pronounced sunk post fell in the sea.

And

that is that is our sinking cities news for now.

Venice has got to pull its socks up and start sinking faster if it wants to continue to be notable.

Just for so long, the poster city

sinking urban landscapes.

So it'll be interesting to see

how it responds.

I was thinking that much of it is caused by

groundwater

being used and leaving sort of voids underneath cities.

As I said, very technically badly distributed wetness, Andy.

Some solutions have been suggested.

One that could work is to pray for God to install

special hydraulic platforms under all cities so they can just be gradually hoisted up as and when necessary uh another suggestion is to refill the missing groundwater from underneath cities by making all people in the affected cities pour half a glass of water into the ground every couple of hours i think you'd be on board with that alex would you not um yes and uh Another suggestion is to change the DNA of humans so we stop doing things that obviously have adverse long-term effects on ourselves, our environment and the places that we live.

So those are three achievable options, I think.

I think we've got more options.

I think we've got more options.

We could start living in cities that float.

Cork, that would most come to mind.

I mean, that could be the biggest misnomer since Greenland, but it's worth a try, isn't it?

Indonesia is moving its capital because it won't be in Jakarta anymore because Jakarta is sinking so badly.

So, it's now going to be on another island island

on Borneo, I think.

And London is one of the cities that is sinking.

So maybe the UK could move its capital.

Now, I would move London to Derry just for the crack.

What would you call it?

Oh, we could have chat about that for ages.

And while we can talk about the causes of this, it looks like, as you said, ground taking groundwater out.

You take groundwater out, basically you create a gap, and then the soil just kind of compresses down.

And when the soil compresses, then the building that is on top of that soil, then that kind of tends to subside.

And it might be a controversial thing to say, but I've never been afraid of the controversy on this podcast.

And somebody needs to say it.

Jack and Jill have a lot to answer for.

Jack and Jill went up that hill, not for the first time, mind you, to fetch a pail of water, fully cognizant of the issues with the underground nacifer.

Did they care?

They did not.

They were looking at their own narrow self-interest.

Jack fell down.

Of course he fell down.

The ground was uneven after the subsidence because they were taking too much water out.

He broke his crown.

Good, good.

I'm glad.

And then Jill, and this is karmic justice, came tumbling after, presumably spilling the water onto the ground where it was able to seep back into the earth whence it came.

I, for one, am glad that justice was doled out to Jack and Jill because this sort of rapacious capitalism needs to stop in the nursery round world.

Don't get me started on little Jack Horner.

Build a different type of house.

Vegetarians news now and research has found, as research so often does, some findings.

And amongst these findings, it found the finding that vegetarians are less concerned about traditions, conformity and benevolence than those who eat meat.

Now, let me emphasize...

This study that found that vegetarians are more power hungry than meat eaters was a study of several thousand people, not just a study of history's most famous vegetarian.

It's not just him.

Vegetarians are more likely to support values related to stimulation, achievement, and

power.

And again, let me emphasise this one study.

It doesn't mean that you, buglers, that you're going to eat a carrot and immediately set about on a personal journey that will result in you overthrowing a national government and installing yourself as a supreme executive leader with power of life and death over all your subjects.

Actually, that is more likely if you live on a diet of burgers and diet coke.

But anyway, look,

this really upends everything we thought we knew about

vegetarianism, does it not?

Well, yes, contrary to the stereotype of the benevolent vegetarian, apparently vegetarianism isn't necessarily associated with more altruism.

Vegetarians tend to prioritize personal success.

The question, Andy, is whether this is causal or correlative.

Do you become vegetarian because you want to be the best you you can be?

Or does being low on creatine and B12 make you crave conquest?

Is power the other red meat?

You know, Otto von Bismarck was famously vegetarian.

His

national plan called for blood and iron.

Was that just because he was hungry for more iron?

That is a lie.

Actually, in his youth, Otto von Bismarck was very famous for swallowing half a dozen eggs at one sitting.

And at one meal he was reported to have eaten soup, eels, cold meat, prawns, lobster, smoked meat, raw ham, roast meat and pudding all while complaining of digestive issues.

Then he had one nice green leaf and he was fine.

Yeah, so

that was a lie about Otto von Bismarck.

I couldn't let that lie stand.

He's so non-vegetarian that he had pickled herrings named after him, the Bismarck herring.

That was famously because of the shape and smell of his undernuts and genital penis.

Oh, God.

The unnecessary friends' genital penis has undone.

Thank you.

I was very proud of it.

Penguins news now.

And well, this is a subject that for too often humans,

and this podcast is as guilty as any other.

We stay clear of penguin news, but not this week.

Three baby penguins in a zoo in Mumbai are at the centre of a huge political arguments and mass pro not mass, but a few people outside the zoo protesting

over their names.

Officials from India's ruling nationalist BJP party, the personal fiefdom of Narendra Modi, have said that the three penguins currently named Noddy, Tom and Pingu should be given Marathi names having been born in Maharashtra.

Now, there's a couple of issues with this.

One, are these names Noddy, Tom and Pingu, actually

British names as was claimed?

Noddy, actually, that's short for night observation device.

Apparently this baby penguin could sing in the dark.

Tom was actually named after Thomas Aquinas, the Italy-based 13th century professional saint.

ringu fair call as the third most popular baby's name in britain according to a

baby's name i've just made up um

but should they be given

only by people who carry their baby on their feet they just carry their baby on their feet from position to position i mean andy andy they should not be given local names i'm sorry i'm sorry I'm sorry.

All penguins are British.

They are dressed in a white tie, tucks and tails, and they all talk about how Gerald lost the estate that wasn't entailed because he had a taste for gambling.

Would it be better if penguins were better at cultural integration?

That's not for me to say.

I guess it depends on your country's norms, but you cannot make a leopard change its spots, and you cannot make a penguin change its name.

That is the true cost of modern nationalism.

Oh,

for the first time ever, I disagree profoundly with Alison on this podcast.

I think, I think, first of all, first of all, the guy, one of the local leaders, Nitin Bankar, a local BJP leader, BJP, the banning jinguistic penguins party,

said that he'd written to authorities in the zoo and he'd led a protest outside the zoo.

Do you see the pictures of the protest?

Stationary.

It was a stationary protest.

What a wasted opportunity.

He could have had a march of the penguins, but he chose not to.

What an idiot.

The penguins are Humboldt penguins, right?

Which reside off the Pacific coast of South America.

So I think they shouldn't have Indian names or English names.

The penguins should really be given a good, solid, Peruvian name that would offend nobody, like Paddington, something like that.

Paddington would be good or Chilean names.

Now, I'm not hugely

familiar with famous people from Chile, but I think we could have Pingu Pascal or possibly my favorite Penguiniche.

Now,

you'd imagine

Penguiniche would have a massive right wing, but that's as much thought as I've given it.

Look,

the people I feel sorry for in this are the penguins themselves.

Is it all right that a three-month-old penguin should find itself at the centre of a geopolitical post-imperial culture warsian dispute?

There's so much to deal with as a penguin at that tender stage of life.

And we expect them to express a coherent but flightless opinion on issues way belong their sphere of knowledge and experience.

It's just not right for me.

Are you saying saying it's it's not black and white?

I'm very much saying that, Neil.

There's occasional flecks of

yellow on the side as well.

The uh the zoos penguins uh were signed in a big money transfer from South Korea in 2016.

So maybe they should be given Korean names instead.

As Anuvab Powell would no doubt testify, were he on this episode, Mumbai is not entirely renowned for its Antarctic-like climate.

So the feathered but flightless evolutionary balls-ups have to be kept in a special controlled enclosure.

So maybe they should be given names that transcend any location, that you know, that just belong to the miracle of science that enables penguins to survive in Mumbai despite the traffic, or just let the penguins name themselves with names such as a Chris.

Do you think you can get some penguin squawking sound effects here?

Squawking's the right word?

I don't know.

I can't remember.

Of all the things we say in this podcast, you're worried about the nomenclature for penguin cods.

Yes, it's what our audience expects.

That is true.

Well, buglers, that brings us to the end of all the week's news and this edition of the podcast.

Next week, we have Tom Ballard, and for the first time on the bugle, Sarah Barron.

Do join us for that.

In the meantime, let's have some plugs.

Neil, what have you got to plug?

I'm doing the UK tour at the end of the year.

We've added an extra Leicester Square Theatre because the first two sold out.

And we're doing the stand in Edinburgh and Newcastle and the Glee Clubs in Birmingham and Cardiff and Hotwater in

Liverpool and Frogg and Buck and Manchester and various different cities around the UK.

So they're all on neildelamere.com forward slash gigs.

So please come along.

Alice?

Well, I am on tour in Australia in three weeks.

It's a show called A Passion for Passion, which is a comedy show about writing a comedy book about romance novels.

I will be in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, and Brisbane.

Please come along to that.

Also, I have a podcast called Realms Unknown, which is about science fiction and fantasy.

And if you want to listen to all the latest in book news, you can tune into that.

Also, I do writers' meetings over at my Patreon, patreon.com/slash Alice Fraser.

I have one show to plug, which is a bonus tour extension show of the Zoltgeist at the Froome Festival on the 7th of July.

Do come along to that details via my extremely sparse but currently accurate website.

We will be back next week.

Don't forget, if you want to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme to help keep this show free, flourishing, and independent, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

And subscribers will get exclusive access to the Ask Andy Show.

We will be recording the next slightly delayed episode extremely soon.

But anyway, thanks to everyone who already subscribes.

And if you want to be way, way cooler than you are now, which no doubt you probably don't if you're listening to this podcast, join our voluntary subscription scheme.

I've not plugged this very well, but the point's there.

Until next week, 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.