The Honey Badger Bugle

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers, and welcome to issue 4343 of The Bugle, the planet's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world.

I'm Andy Zaltzman here in Bugle News Headquarters, a shed in my garden, where we keep tabs on literally everything that happens in the universe.

Well, I have a computer, so I could do that if I wanted to.

The things I generally keep tabs on generally involve people hitting and throwing balls at each other.

Joining me to forensically analyse the latest week to have rightly consigned itself to the history books, sort of history social media feeds these days, I suppose.

Firstly, from here in London, it's Felicity Wards.

Hello, Felicity.

How are you doing?

I'm good.

Just when you said hitting balls with sticks, it took me all of my willpower, not just to go,

show us your back.

Good is the answer to that.

That's good.

That's good.

That's good news.

And also, joining us from basically as far away as you can get on this planet without going into space in New Zealand, it's James Nakise.

Hello, James.

Woohoo!

Yeah, I'm just cheering for myself being awake right now.

This is amazing.

Yes, Yes, we are recording at not entirely sociable hour New Zealand time, but yeah, lovely sunny day here in London.

We are recording on the 2nd of June 2025, the anniversary coincidentally of the 2nd of June 1962, a day which saw one of the 20th century's most brutal conflicts, which is admittedly a

hotly contested title.

It's Chile versus Italy at the Formal World Cup,

a game that has gone down in history as the Battle of Santiago, a sensational match described by the BBC's David Coleman in a piece of footage that is one of the greatest things on YouTube, along with the exploding whale.

Coleman described it

at the time in his report to the world as the most stupid, appalling, disgusting, and disgraceful exhibition of football possibly in the history of the game.

It's worth looking up by the sanitised primed injury exaggerating standards of today's sport.

It is truly extraordinary.

Limb clattering fouls, body charges, fist fights all over the place.

And that was just the first eight minutes until Giorgio Farini was sent off for kicking an opponent.

It wasn't even football shaped, as some players were back then.

The police had to drag him off the pitch.

In the meantime, Chilean left winger Leonel Sanchez broke Italy's Humberto Maschio's nose with a left hook.

Not entirely footballing behaviour.

After sending Mario David of Italy off for attempting to kick Sanchez in the head, the referee Kenneth Aston attempted to hack out a temporary ceasefoul, but after a half-time of intense negotiations, the match and the violence continued.

Paride Tumburas charged at Chile's Eladio Rojas with a chainsaw, causing a partially lost shoulder and a significant bleed just outside the six-yard box that confused goalkeeper Carlo Mattrel when Chile took the lead with a Jaime Ramirez header that skimmed off the puddle of blood into the bottom of the corner in the 73rd minute.

Francesco Jannic, a student of Roman warfare for Italy, catapulted flaming balls of tar into the Chilean penalty area.

Literally sought an equaliser, but Alberto Fuyu responded by galloping down the left wing on a horse wielding a mace, which he swung hard at Sandro Salvatore's temple, causing the Italy right back to need to be patched up with some cement and given an extremely potent triple shot of grapper before he was able to continue.

Jorge Toro's decisive second goal in the 87th minute came after Honorino Landa distracted the Italians by lobbing a grenade into the six-yard box, enabling Toro to slot home through the cloud of smoke at different times.

And I've only very slightly exaggerated, and I've only exaggerated a a bit after half-time.

So, it's one of the great sporting events of all time.

I didn't know how long that was going to go for, so I had a peanut MM.

Just the one or the full packet?

I mean, to be honest, when I start talking about historical sport, you can book in a three-course meal generally.

I'm surprised you get the guests in at the beginning.

I feel like this is a pre-record.

You could just do that up top with Chris.

Yep.

And call us in.

Yeah.

i'm sure we think 4 000 episodes in and it's never occurred to him that we could just be here at the halfway mark

um because like his stories that's when it gets interesting

sing

sing that's what you're on that's what you're on the show for felicity that's what that's right

Comedy ping pong.

I'm here back and forth.

You set them up.

I knock them now.

On this day in 1839

in China,

well, China destroyed 1.2 million kilograms of opium that they had confiscated from British traders, which then gave Britain a reason to start a war called the First Opium War.

And we hear a lot from our politicians about bringing back our glorious history.

And

I sincerely hope they mean the bit of our glorious history when we were the world's leading drug dealer, the Pablo Escobar of the early victorian era um team gb

well here stymer's just announced that he wants to invest in in more warships i think more defense

i think it's time

it's actually the drug war that he needs to participate in more

get the junkies get the junkies involved me i mean they're not on time but they are motivated yep you know it would help you deal with that cold winter bill that's coming your way in the UK.

It's a little bit of opium to take the edge off.

That's what they did in Grandpa's Day.

I couldn't feel it.

I can't feel anything.

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

This week, film reviews, the big summer blockbusters that have been released this week.

We review Ethel the Granny Sniper 4.

What a follow-up this is with her new high-tech bionic elbow, smart eyeball and invisible mobility scooter.

Can Ethel continue to save the world by surgically assassinating the world's most dangerous baddies?

If you've seen the first three films, you'll know the answer.

Almost certainly yes, as long as she takes her meds and has a good snooze after lunch.

And the intriguing romantic subplot as Frank moves into the nursing home, is he really Ethel's old boyfriend from 70 years ago?

Or is he a Russian android spy agent hitman purporting to be the non-agenarian who Ethel had heard on quite good authority died of a heart attack playing cribbage more than 10 years ago?

With all the graphic violence, fruity language, creaking nook joints, and bond-like medical accessories that fans of the EGS franchise have come to know and love, Ethel the Granny Sniper 4 promised to be the biggest grossing movie worldwide in the over 75s demographic.

And of course, the original computer game is also onto its sixth iteration this summer.

Ethel the Granny Sniper from Z's to Zombies promises to be thrillingly brutal as always, but also with poignant reflections on the nature of mortality.

Also, we review.

Am I still here?

Also, we review Badger Gedden 3, Roadkill Revenge, fairly self-explanatory.

The CGI recreation of the Badger Battalion, destroying a six-mile traffic jam on the A46, is set to break the franchise record for human body count.

And it's a great film.

Badger leader Badgerkus Hammerclaw has never been more deadly with his new retractable tungsten scimitar tusks and ability to mutate from Badger to Bollard in under a second.

Can Britain's last line of defense, the Badger-Proof Teen Secret Police Cadets Flannel and Gooch, stop the marauding omnivores from destroying the nation?

Or will Badgerkus Hammerclaw be brought down down by

internecine conflict in the Badger community, sparked by an influx of American honey badgers intent on world domination, led by their golden-pelted leader, Dinald?

It's not the most subtle satire in the Badgergeddon franchise, but you know, it works.

At 3 hours and 25 minutes, and with even more questionably anthropomorphized Badger sex scenes than Badger Gedden 2, which remains banned in more than 98% of the countries in the world, Badgergeddon 3 won't be for everyone, but it will be for someone, and that someone is almost certainly you.

And finally, we review Horace and Clark, painstakingly accurate adaptation of the 1952 World Snooker final between Horace Lindrum of Australia and New Zealand's Clark McConnachie, played over two weeks at the Holdsworth Hall in Manchester, clouded by the aftermath of the death of British King George VI just a couple of weeks before.

Can the two players set aside their personal grief at the death of the monarch to focus on the best of 145 frame contest, playing 12 frames a day in their quest to become the first player from outside the British Isles to win the coveted world title?

Or would they be distracted by unquenchable feelings of romantic attraction towards Britain's beautiful new young queen?

The scene in which Lindrum clinches the match in the 110th frame, taking an unassailable 73-37 lead, despite experiencing erotic visions involving a coin and the young monarch's face coming to life and refereeing the match, looks set to be the most controversial scene of the cinema year, but it is unquestionably artistically impressive.

The film does fizzle out a little.

The match continued for two more days after Lindrum had taken the winning leap.

He eventually won 94.49 fact, genuine fact, the final two frames they I couldn't be asked with.

But it's nice to see a history-based film actually stick with some facts for once.

Although, whether Khrushchev and Eisenhower did actually meet in the crowd on day six of the game to discuss what would happen after Stalin died the next year, that's for historians to argue about.

So, when I said painstakingly accurate, I meant the recreation of the actual snooker scenes is painstakingly accurate, as well as the clothing and decor.

And that's all you can ask for in a film.

Anyway, those are our three films of the summer here from the Bugle Film Department

in the bid.

It's such an Andy's Osmond flex.

And that's all we've got time for this week.

It's such an Andy's Osmond flex to get a Kiwi and an Aussie on the podcast and then drop a specific bit of sports knowledge that neither the Kiwi or the Aussie have any idea.

We played Paul

for the Queen.

There is so little of what I understand when I come on this show.

So little.

She's here to feel dumb.

That's my purpose.

I'm like,

I hope no one knows this.

I hope it's not just me.

Look, I see the purpose of the bugle as to

not just entertain, but to educate.

And

it's very much the BBC's wreathian values.

And to be honest, young people today

don't know enough about 1950s snooker.

And, you know, if no one else is better.

The problem is, Andy, I'm from New Zealand.

There's going to be a comedy club gig where some dude's going to stand up and go, oi, I'm McClonicley's great-grandson, and your mate's a dickhead.

And then, and then, what do I do with that, mate?

What do I do?

That's true.

I got to say, I really perked up when you included honey badges.

I'm like, now I'm listening.

Let's talk.

I love honey badges.

They're like the animal equivalent of a hobbit where once they've eaten they're evolutionarily uh like their intent the next thing they think about is where their next meal comes from all they think about is eating it is extraordinary and they have no regard for their physical health they are so interested in eating sweet things i don't know if you how many documentaries you've watched on honey badges i've watched a few and if you couldn't tell and watching them look at an entire beehive and go this isn't going to be good, but I do love funny.

And then they go in and they're just getting

stung to fing dead.

They're like, god damn it, this is really on me, but I like honey.

And then there's an amazing part.

This is the best.

This is one of my favorite things of any documentary ever.

A honey badger started eating a snake.

And the snake kept biting him in the face, but the honey badger had like a locked jaw and was like eating his body.

And both of them just slowly dying, figuring out who is going to die full.

And you think they're both dead.

And like the documentarian who's been following this particular honey badger for like three years is crying.

It's like two hours later, she's figuring out what to do.

And then the honey badger was actually just paralyzed by the snake.

The honey badger comes to, looks around, and the first thing it does goes, that's right, I was in the middle of lunch.

Um, yum, yum, yum, yum, and then continues to eat the snake.

a metaphor that's basically a metaphor for the history of human commerce

that's capitalism

have have we got uh have we got time for the top story

no i i think if you just want to do some plugs then we can wrap and go home yeah

don't get me started on on honey badges that's the same as getting any started on history or cricket

can we keep this show focused?

No,

when have I ever been focused?

Well,

a top story now.

And it's almost like we're desperately trying to avoid the appalling realities of the world.

I mean, it has been another tricky week for the northern hemisphere with war, brutality, failure, human rights, atrocities, genocide, and genocide-related pedantry winning out once again over hope, truth, happiness, and the idea of human progress.

So, instead, for our top story this week, we're popping south of the equator for New Zealand news now.

And

James, James, I mean,

we joke about

war maybe too often on this podcast, but New Zealand is on the brink of what could be a defining conflict between Fur Patrol.

and the government.

Fur Patrol being, as I'm sure you'll explain, a prominent prominent rock group.

Yes, it's all coming up, Mill House, as we say over here.

And the Fur Patrol, now there's a lot of different names here, so I'll try and summarize.

Essentially, the Aotearoa New Zealand Music Awards was last week.

The leader of the house, Chris Bishop, was at those awards.

We are unsure if he was there as the leader of the house, of the government, or as just a fan, because he was wearing a Fur Patrol t-shirt.

During

awards, there was a performance by a beloved Māori artist called Stan Walker.

Now, it's been an interesting time for Māori in New Zealand, so there was quite a lot of Māori sovereignty, pro-Maori paraphernalia during his performance.

The leader of the house did not like this.

And he may or may not have been drunk, but he was definitely holding a beer while wearing his Fur Patrol t-shirt.

He said very loudly, What a load of crap.

Now,

he went on quite loudly about this all being a load of crap to the point where an older gentleman turned around and said, shut up, dickhead.

And now that is the worst insult you can say in New Zealand culture.

It's a bit like Australian rules for this T-bombs as far as the eye can see.

But if you call someone a dickhead and you mean it, that's a fight.

So what we've now got is the leader of the house calling a prominent Māori musician's performance crap while wearing a fur patrol t-shirt.

And this old gentleman has called him a dickhead.

And it turns out this old gentleman is a guy called Don McGlashen from a famous New Zealand band called the Muttonbirds.

And he is beloved.

I'm not sure what the English for, it's a bit like Cliff Richard calling someone a dickhead.

You don't expect to hear the word dickhead come out of his mouth.

But to be called a dickhead by Cliff Richard will just haunt you for the rest of your life.

So Don McGlashing calling the leader of of the house a dickhead about heckling a Maori performer, it's national news.

The Deputy Prime Minister has come in and said that obviously, it's the Leader of the House's right to say that it might be crap.

It could have been crap.

Art is subjective.

The Prime Minister has weighed in and said that the Leader of the House has always been a big fan of New Zealand.

The Prime Minister has weighed in on this.

I cannot stress that enough.

It is as close to civil war as New Zealand has been.

To add Field of Fire Fur Patrol, the people on the t-shirt have come out and said, even though he was wearing our t-shirt, we do not in any way, shape, or form support him saying that things were crap.

This could be deferred New Zealand civil war after, of course, the Māori wars and

the Ork Elven Wars of the early 2000s.

Obviously.

So things are very tight here.

The leader of house, Chris Bishop, has come out and said, in hindsight, he probably shouldn't have anything out loud.

That is the most New Zealand

result that we could possibly have, and that it is probably a tie.

Could I just say I did actually read about this, and I read, I was like, okay,

it just kept, as you said, it just kept building and building and building.

And at the end of it, all I could think is, and they call women emotional,

like just.

and also if you haven't seen um the new zealand prime minister um try to imagine someone who looks like somehow the son of every single person from guess who

that's it like a well-dressed skin tag that is what christopher luxon looks like google him tell me i'm wrong

well i i think that my favorite part of the story is when he gets called a dickhead and he turns around and says, well, I could say the same thing to you, you, mate.

And

Don McGlashin goes, Well, I wasn't the one talking.

And this is all recorded in all the prominent New Zealand websites as a massive confrontation.

Now, to anyone who doesn't know New Zealanders, you might go, Well, that's just two people having a polite disagreement.

But in New Zealand culture, these are haymakers being thrown.

As you guys will know from your time here, these are, you know, these are generational wounds being opened up.

You're a dickhead.

Well, I could say say you're a deckhead.

Well, I'm not the one talking, so you're obviously the bigger deckhead.

It's, I mean, hard to recover.

He may not be re-elected.

Yes, so it does appear to the list of great human conflicts, good versus evil, truth versus lies, capitalism versus communism.

Shame we never got to see that one with both at full strength.

It was like Mayweather and Pacquiao all over again.

America versus itself, Italy versus Chile, 1962.

We can now add Fur Patrol versus Chris Bishop from the New Zealand National Party.

And we should have, I mean, when you sent us the link, Fur Patrol,

I just assumed it was a kid cartoon series or a police branch devoted to clamping down on people wearing animal costumes for whatever personal reasons.

But they are, in fact, a New Zealand

rock band.

And Chris Bishop is not Christopher Bainbridge, the early 16th century Bishop of Durham, but the New Zealand Minister of Transport and Housing and Infrastructure and Sport and Recreation and Leader of the House responsible for the management of government business in parliament.

And James, that really does show there is not enough to do in New Zealand.

If you can be a government minister with all of those portfolios,

then I don't know what that tells us about the police.

We'll just, just as a smallest side note, I did beat him in a high school debate in 1999 when I was still drunk from the night before.

And I mean, he is now the minister of everything, and I am a recovering alcoholic.

So I don't know.

I think, again, it's a tie.

I think we call it a tie.

Was he at school in the capacity that he's the same age as you, or did he come to debate a child?

Look,

funny

in that moment, it was teenager versus teenager.

Okay.

Well, I'm proud of you for beating him.

American news now, and well, a tragic relationship breakdown.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump have split up.

Elon Musk has left the White House.

These are very worrying times.

He is reportedly on the loose somewhere in the world.

If you do encounter Elon Musk roaming around the world after his escape from the White House, the advice is that you do not attempt conversation.

That you wait until his charge runs out, then take him to your local robot repair garage and see if they can rewire him before you switch him back on.

And if all else fails, run in a zigzag and climb a tree.

It's, I guess, it was sort of inevitable

that

this whirlwind romance should Peter out.

And I do apologize sincerely to any listeners called Peter who are feeling dirty and ashamed at having their name used in a sentence referring to Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

I sincerely apologize.

So he's said that he will,

well, Trump said that he Musk will continue to visit the White House as, quotes, a friend and advisor to the president.

Now, I don't think Trump has any genuine friends, and he's about as likely to take advice on board as Tolstoy is to write a pornographic sci-fi novel.

That's the Tolstoy.

He's been dead since 1910.

So,

I mean,

it's been a strange,

I mean, we could just presage every

story

on any podcast or news broadcast with, oh, it's been a bit of a strange time.

But, you know, what have you made of the

Musk-Trump breakup, Felicity?

Well, what's better than seeing a rich loser fail?

Two of them failing than falling out.

I love it because I know and they know that money, and in their case, a hair transplant, is the only reason that people hang around with either of them, which as a reminder is gender-affirming care.

So I've started doing my favorite petty thing.

Every time I'm speaking on a podcast and Elon Musk comes up, I have started reminding everyone that everyone still calls it Twitter.

And I know that that pisses off Elon Musk.

I love, no one calls it X.

No one says I X'd a message.

They still say I tweeted it.

When people talk about their ex,

no one is thinking about Elon Musk except for Grimes.

I love that he failed.

I love that he failed branding.

I love that even his son, whose name is X, still calls it Twitter.

You know, I don't know if you've seen X.

He's the kid that walked around the White House.

Elon used him as a human shield while he tried to give off the appearance of being what humans refer to as a father.

But instead, he just continued to look like one of the lava people from the X-Files.

He looks like if dead skin was stretched over a piece of mechanical furniture, somehow hollow and bloated at the same time.

The eyes of a serial killer, the mouth of a pensioner in a nursing home, awaiting his next bowl of soup.

So I'm happy.

Well, that's good.

I mean, that's, you know, who says there's no good news in the world anymore?

I mean, it has been, James, it's been obviously a tricky time for Donald Trump

this week, his titanic efforts to enrich the working classes of America by causing a global trade war that pushes their businesses and their employers' businesses to the precipice of collapse, encountered a bit of a temporary iceberg in which judges ruled that his tariffs were illegal, then other judges deruled that ruling, and then they're trying to derule the deal.

Look, it's one of those things that's not worth taking any notice of, because by the time you've got your f ⁇ ing head around what's happened, what has happened will have been de-happened by other happenings, which will themselves be in the process of unhappening.

I mean, I think basic principle is that there's a special presidential exemption, which is the fourth and a half amendment, which states that you can break some of the laws all of the time, all of the laws some of the time, but you can't break all of the laws all of the time.

But Trump's looking for a loophole in it somewhere.

But anyway, his

breakup with Musk, where does that leave the world?

You know, we've, we've, you know, we're invested in these romances, James, like, you know, like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and

former England football captain Billy Wright and whichever one of the Beverly sisters he married back in the 50s.

We devote ourselves to these things.

But I mean, how will the world cope with this

breakup?

Well, as the child of divorce, Andy, I feel uniquely positions

to comment on this.

So, what we're entering into now is, you know, obviously they're both victims of their own toxic behavior

in that Trump can't stay loyal to whoever he's partnered with.

And Elon has fathered a whole bunch of Doge kids and decided that that's his job done.

And now he's going off to another country.

I think the key thing is the quietness of Elon Musk in all of this.

He's being a bit more quiet and he's almost being meek.

And that's a clear sign

in getting divorced that he's about to drop some really dark personal shit online about Donald Trump.

So I think that's, you know, that's the tea is about to be served and it's probably going to be rubous.

So it's definitely some horrible back and forth.

I think we're all quietly waiting for that car crash to see what happens when mom and dad really go no-hole bars at each other.

Like, how small is Donald Trump's dick?

How small is Elon Musk's dick?

Why were they looking at each other's dicks?

Why won't they stop talking about each other's dicks?

None of us want to hear about either of the dicks.

And yet, for four days, the news cycle has been nothing but these two men measuring what's left of their dicks.

So,

the darkest times are ahead, Andy.

That's the quick, that's the quick answer.

The darkest times from the giant shadows of tiny penises.

Yeah, according to the New York Times,

Musk has been regularly consuming, amongst other things, ketamine ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms.

And I mean, it's quite interesting.

I mean, these are essentially performance-enhancing drugs if the performance you're trying to enhance is having a completely and destructively deranged view of politics, economics, and the human race in general.

And I guess, you know, we should remember the words of Jesus Christ.

Let he or she who would not seek escape from daily interactions with Donald Trump via the use of psychotropic substances cast the first stone.

Yeah, fair.

And I guess with Musk, he might be the only person for whom using ecstasy and magic mushrooms makes them more in tune with reality rather than less in tune with reality.

And they could be seen as a sort of gateway between rampant, plutocratic, power-crazed egotism and a return to sober normality.

So

interesting to see how this pans out.

Here's the thing, Andy.

I don't think we as the public can have it both ways.

I don't think that we

can watch Elon Musk, the world's richest man, get involved in a U.S.

election with Donald Trump, get him elected, make up his own ministry, start to deregulate and deconstruct American democracy.

and then turn around and be surprised that he's been on a shitload of drugs this whole time.

It's an incredibly stupid decision financially.

Why would you go from just being a freewheeling, world-traveling super billionaire who just runs around fathering kids with women who really need cash

and get involved in US politics unless you have been high for months?

Like we've all been on that massive bender where you start off at like jonglers in Birmingham and end up in Estonia.

Like, you know,

we've all done it, but he's really taken that months-long drug bender to a

do you remember 2006, Andy?

Well, actually, it wasn't me then.

No, he doesn't.

That's the point.

I started the gig in Junglos in Birmingham, and the crowd moved to Estonia.

That's different.

Look, can I say in all his time associated with the White House, or even as a man, and I use the word loosely, doing business in the United States, this is the single best thing Elon has done for the American people.

He has, with this article, single-handedly just made drugs uncool.

And that's a win for kids.

That's a win for people's health and a win for people who don't take drugs, who go to parties and have to listen to newfound hallucinogenic spirituality from soft cotton cat wearing.

communist manifesto tarrying but not reading circle wire rimmed glasses and moustache wearing inheritance beneficiaries No one who has any respect for themselves or drugs or fashion will take drugs after knowing Elon Musk does them regularly and still comes across as such a finging runner-up.

No one will do it.

You've made me so much more optimistic about the fruits of the world this week, Felicity.

That's, you know, that's because I hadn't seen that angle.

That is, you know, something

honestly, once you have depression for a while, you really start to see the upside of the most horrendous things.

Well, on the subject of health, it's obviously a big issue in America.

And

there's a new report, the Make America Healthy Again

report commissioned by Health Secretary RFK,

Robert Kennedy.

You don't need me to tell you what the S stands for on this family show.

RFK is, of course, the medical science fact and wellness skeptic who was somehow in this least plausible of alternate dimensions found himself as the health secretary of the world's most and least health-obsessed nation.

Other those two titles should be held by the same country, but that's the world we live in.

A 73-page report has been published, as I said, the so-called Make America Healthy Again program,

which ostensibly rails against the very foundations of modern America: personal choice, a complete lack of corporate accountability, and poor people being as ill as possible for as long as possible.

And they say they're trying to, you know, change this, but these are strange times, as we keep saying.

None of the old certainties still pertain.

Now, RFK claimed the report was based on gold standard science, but according to another report about the reports by Notice, the not-for-profit non-partisan news site, RFK's gold standard science was the same gold standard that Ben Johnson achieved in the 1988 men's Olympic 100-meter final, and that was significantly based on bullshit.

Seven reports cited are, it seems, entirely made up, others mischaracterized or taken out of context.

And science is so much easier when you can invent stuff for fun, which explains why

George Lucas is so much wealthier either than Galileo or periodic table celebrity Dimitri Mendeleev.

Furthermore, the report also ignores many of the biggest dangers to public health in America.

It doesn't mention the fact that RFK himself has, amongst other twatteries, taken out smoking prevention offices and an STI laboratory.

The report is laced with

vaccine scepticism, which at least is on brand.

It's also anonymously written because why would anyone want to be able to check whether a medical science report has any input from, for example, medical scientists?

and it's also at best light on detail on how it will be possible to make america healthy again under an administration devoted to reducing regulations and to bending over coquettishly to the demands of corporate lobbying so there's there's a few little glitches in it but fundamentally they've made quite a lot of it up but i mean is this the way science should be now at felicity that actually just making up is that's what people want rather than facts that are generally going to disappoint them give the people what they want Look, I feel like he might not be the hero that we want, but he is the hero that we deserve.

Honestly, I think we've had enough.

I think humans, we've had enough.

We've done our time.

We've made everything bad.

And maybe it's time to just let a rubric happen.

Let's just let the snake eat itself.

Because

if you are shocked.

that the health secretary who looks and sounds and acts like if Tom Waits went too hard on nitrous nitrous oxide bulbs, then shot himself in the throat, but didn't recover mentally when the bullet went near his brain, isn't a reliable source for health.

Like, this man looks like he doesn't wash himself with a flannel, he looks like he washes himself with a corn on the cob.

You know what I mean?

Like, let it happen.

We did it to ourselves.

This is a symptom of who we are, and this is the best we can do.

It's over.

And I guess

the problem is with scientific truth is that it is generally negative and it wants to control our lives.

You know, you can't live forever.

You can't fly

purely through willpower.

You can't turn a courgette into a sausage just by oinking at it.

That's the kind of bullying factualism that holds our species back in a fug of resignation.

And with all the health scares that are out there at the moment,

eating a chicken nugget is tantamount to playing water polar with crocodiles, claim scientists.

Trying to use a toaster in the bath can be bad for your well-being and result in soggy breakfasts, claim scientists.

Gravity applies seven days a week, warns scientists after spate of Thursday plummetings.

What harm does it do to give people a little respite by just making shit up?

Five pints of hot chocolate per day can make you immune to rheumatoric polypoplitis.

Sitting on the sofa watching 24 hours of sport a day on TV reduces your chance of being run over by a bus by 100%.

Citrus fruit can stop scurvy.

That kind of bullshit that actually makes things better for ourselves.

That is what science should be doing.

And RFK is a you know, he's ahead of the curve.

He is.

He's a leader and he's a hero.

Just one quick final piece of American news.

Pete Hegseth, the surprise and unjustifiable defense secretary of the USA,

has

warned the world to prepare for war to ensure peace in the Indo-Pacific region.

Now,

reading between the lines here and knowing

what we do know of Pete Hegseth so far in his political career, to me, it sounds like he's looked at the maps and he's planning to nuke either Australia or New Zealand.

Do either of you have a preference for which one he goes for first?

Nah,

it's exciting.

I think.

I don't know.

I think

as an Australian, as a New Zealand, I think we both would be in agreement for Adelaide, right, Felicity?

Like, just

Adelaide.

Hey, yeah, you know, you're right.

And

only for the reason, because I actually really like Adelaide, I like the people in it, but that is the one place that they brag about that there was no convicts and they're all the colonizers.

Well, if you want to say chance and dance, then you can get to

it's such an American thing of like the Indo-Pacific.

I'm like, dude, the Indo-Pacific?

Like, do you you mean like the Indian Ocean and the Pacific?

Like, that's, that's just a sea at that point.

Like, there's very little.

Like,

the, like, the Pacific is big enough.

Like, if you throw, it's like when Americans go, oh, happy Asian American and Pacific Islander.

Like, you don't need to lump up this.

We've got a large enough area we're trying to cover without bringing in whole other continents.

Like, it's, it's so large.

And what are we meant to cover?

I just feel like Americans have this idea of Navy maneuvers in the Pacific without realizing none of us have any military.

Like, New Zealand doesn't have an air force.

Australia is still building its submarine fleet.

Like, it's under construction.

If the war happens, we need a timeout so we can like, we're going to end up swapping jerseys at halftime with China if it all kicks off.

Like, you barely have an air force.

Neither of us barely have a national airline, like let alone militarized.

That is our air force.

That's like literally if like we're going to have to

the Chinese invading New Zealand so we can play them the safety advert with Stephen Adams and a bunch of kids playing basketball telling them to put their seatbelt on.

Great jokes, though.

They'll always get great jokes from our New Zealand.

I still remember the Lord of the Rings one, I still remember it.

That's because half New Zealand's comedy scene was in that.

Yeah, that's right.

It's like, I know them, I know them, I know them.

Maybe I will listen to the safety announcement, actually.

Uh,

did you want to do?

Was there anything else?

Or I think we've done it was the raccoons, but I'm not sure there's much in that, unless you haven't got a lot on either of the next two.

All right, I've got a bit on you.

We are quite well stocked on bullshit stories this week, guys.

Um, i i don't i i hope we're not including the honey badger rant in that on

i would call christy as a as a fellow fan of the honey badger i

i was so tempted to join in and start talking about how they eat park rangers bollocks and i thought i've got to back off right now yeah it's hard to it's hard to have boundaries talking about honey badger But just, I mean, on the snake that you mentioned,

eating itself, if the snake has already been eaten by the honey badger, does the honey badger now eat itself with the snake?

Yeah, it's like the old lady who swallowed a fly.

Just something else comes.

Finally, this week, art news and, well, some very exciting news from, well, 43,000 years ago.

It turns out that Neanderthals might have been artists.

Scientists have claimed that a small red dot on a stone was a fingerprint that may have been an attempt to draw a nose on the stone that looked a little bit like a face.

If so, the question arises, why, after tens of thousands of years of evolution, were the Neanderthal people so f ⁇ ing shit at art, a red fingerprint as a so-called nose on a vaguely head-shaped pebble.

Literally tens of thousands of years.

What the f ⁇ are we being impressed by here?

No wonder these useless f ⁇ ers were rendered extinct as soon as the first decent competition came on the scene.

Or maybe, maybe this is evidence that they'd already been through a phase of highly technical artistic achievements.

Elaborately painted sculptural freezes depicting epochal battles between Neanderthals and fictional beasts, glorious polychromatic frescoes of divinely inspired imaginations of heaven and hell, entertainingly realistic paintings of bisons playing snooker.

But what we found here is something from the Neanderthals conceptual art phase, a dot on a rock, asking questions such as, What is art?

Who are we?

What are rocks?

What are dots?

What if we put a bison in a tank of formaldehyde?

These kind of things that get to the very heart of what it is to be alive.

Were you impressed or unimpressed by this dot on a 43,000-year-old pebble?

I love it.

It's what I live for.

I've actually got, I've got to go soon.

I've got to get to another exhibition.

It's

just a shit on the ground.

when i saw if you look at the picture of the pebble the dot is so small that i immediately thought the question is did he 43 years thousand years ago also make the noise boop when he did it that's all i that's all i could think about little dot boop it's tiny

um

i love

I can't imagine the amount of money that's gone into the research to figure out that was a fingerprint and that this was art.

Like, don't get me wrong, history is important, but we don't seem to learn from it.

So, why the f

should we be learning that Neanderthals also, like us putting a moustache, a funny moustache on a poster, used to get a little red dot and go boop on the pebble?

I don't get it.

I love it.

I am obsessed with the idea.

I don't know why it's happening.

I think Felicia has a great point.

I think, you know, who else was an artist?

Hitler.

And

he liked putting a little dot on his nose.

And are we all just being sucked into Neanderthal?

Hitler.

And before you know it, we're going down this dark pathway and finding out the real reason the Neanderthals aren't here anymore.

I just, I think this is a plea, really, artists listening to this podcast, just record your process because this is what happens when critics are allowed to write the narratives.

All right.

That's like a dot on a rock, a dot of paint on a rock.

Have any of these people talking about this ever painted in their lives?

All right.

There's going to be people showing up

to do archaeological digs of thousands of years and go, oh, this

brick,

they were trying to put a nose on it.

And, like, no, there was just splatter from a painting session gone horribly wrong.

We don't, we don't know.

Like, they've put fathom, it's a fingerprint.

Yes, that's science.

It's art.

We don't know.

Like, it could have like, it could have been shit.

It could have actually been like, he could have picked it up and gone, boom, and they've gone.

Barry, that's the worst thing you've ever made.

Throw that away.

Like, we, we don't, we don't,

Why are we trying to tell people that this is Neanderthal art?

Just let it be a fun fingerprint on the rock.

That's exciting.

You don't need to build this whole narrative that there was like Michelangelo of cavemen putting dots on rocks and be like, oh, imagine the mystery.

No, the mystery is why you were given money and to tell people that this is art.

It's hard enough out here for artists without

dead people from 43,000 years ago taking up the stage.

Like, get all I, this is just, it's like the ultimate white privilege.

Can't even get a show up

because some dude 43,000 years ago put a dot on a rock on the mother.

I just got to take my beta blocker.

Give me a second.

Absolutely.

I prefer to think that

it's actually evidence that the Neanderthals had fingerprint recognition technology.

And actually, that was

the remnants of

some sort of front door, Opalite Secret open technology.

It's the beginning of biometric data.

Yeah, it is.

Testify.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we will have exclusive coverage of the discovery of all forms of Neanderthal art on the bugle over the next, let's say, 43,000 years.

Beginning next week, when we have on the show Alice Fraser and Neil Delamere, then we have Tom Ballard and Sarah Barron, new to the show, the following week.

So before we go, who has stuff to plug?

James?

I have

a documentary series on the nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, which was nominated for a New York Radio Award.

And just beautiful listeners, it's harrowing.

It's not funny.

Please don't go in there looking for jokes.

Please don't listen to it all at once.

But

I'm very proud of it and it's about um the effects of nuclear fallout uh on pacific islanders from the tests that's called the last voyage of the rainbow warrior

uh sounds and do you do you come down uh that it was uh a good idea to just use an entire region of the world as as human yeah they they were they were asking for it was the is the main is the main um conclusion we came to there

What have you got to plug?

What have I got to plug?

In the UK, I'm doing a tour show in September.

I'm doing two tour shows.

I'm doing Manchester and Bristol, and they will, please God, be my last two shows, last two performances of this show.

I've had it.

I've absolutely had it.

They're two-hour shows.

It's called I'm Exhilisting.

You can get tickets from live nation.co.uk.

You might be able to get them from my website.

I haven't visited it in months, so I have no idea if it's up there.

I'm very poorly organized.

If you're in Australia, I am on dancing with the stars that starts on the 15th of june awesome um

if anyone in the world has

has amazon prime i'm um in the office uh the australian one that a lot of ricky gervais fans begged for they're like if only there was a remake with a woman in it um that's that's the most of the feedback i got

And then if anyone has Apple TV,

I was an Australian playing a northerner that was was filmed in Wellington on a TV show called Time Bandits.

I think that is still available to watch.

Well, Buglers, consider yourselves plugged.

There will shortly be details of the Bugle 18th birthday live online show.

As soon as everything is confirmed, we will give you details of that.

It will be in October this year.

18 years of pure, unadulterated truth.

Bullshit.

Oh, truth, yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you for listening.

We'll be back next week.

If you want to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme to help keep the show free, flourishing, and independent, and get your exclusive access to the monthly-ish Ask Andy Show, which I think we're probably due to record another one of quite soon, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

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.