Carney Trumps MAGA, and we explain Pete Hegseth

The Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4338 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a world that won't be visual or indeed anything else if it doesn't get its act together PFQ at some point in the next couple of thousand years.

I'm Andy Zaltzman and our philosophical question for this week is, if a tree falls on a shitting bear in the forest, but no one is live streaming it, is it news, gossip, rumor, or lie?

No one will ever know.

Join me to discuss this and everything else in the known universe.

Well, I'm delighted to welcome back to the bugle.

Firstly, from Brooklyn, it's Hari Kondabolu.

Hello, Hari.

How are you?

I'm good, Andy.

How are you?

Wait, why did I say I was good?

That's a lie.

That's a lie.

I was very...

You know, because when you're a person with depression, you have to say fine, because if you tell the truth, I mean, the whole world would just end.

But, okay,

fine, I guess.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, we'll take that.

You'll take that as a

to start with.

Also joining us.

But the end of the show.

You've been doing this show now, Hari, for, what, eight and a half years, and I should know by now not to say, how are you you, at the start of the show don't like the question no i'm quite right it's a very british it's a bit probing yeah what yes it's probing and also fundamentally when people ask it they don't really want the honest answer no so you know if if the world takes up my proposition that everyone should just wear a lanyard uh stating you know basic facts uh including you know their name so you can remember people's names and you know

just I'm fine or I'm not fine or I'm really well, then

we'd avoid awkward conversations like this on a podcast.

Well, it's worse in the UK because you don't say, How are you, generally, don't you say, Are you all right?

Uh, well, it depends if we're being passive-aggressive, aggressive-passive, aggressive-aggressive, or passive-passive, which are the four means of communication in this country.

Um, so uh, yeah, you've got to, and you can only tell which is which based on eyebrow use.

Um,

also joining us from Mumbai, India.

It's Anuvab Pal.

Hello, Anuvab.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Harry.

I'm reluctant to ask how are you, but I'm

how, how, how, how, how, let's go with how will you be in five years' time?

Let's take a guess.

That's excellent.

That's like an interview question.

Where do I see my career in five years?

It's the thing that you guys say in Britain I really love where when someone asks how you are, you say not too bad.

Yes.

I quite enjoy that.

It's like just the right amount of bad, but not too bad.

Yeah, I'm still alive.

Yeah, I was just

telling Harry,

you know, he's got a lovely, lovely bit of stand-up about mangoes.

And basically, it's mango season in India, but people just go crazy eating mangoes from March till May when it starts raining.

And this is the first time where I'm eating mangoes and contemplating whether

India's going to war or not.

So that's never happened before.

But, you know, if you go to war whilst eating a mango, how sweet that war will taste.

So, well, we will discuss this more later on in the show.

We are recording on the 29th of April 2025.

It is World Wish Day.

I don't know if either of you are aware of this.

It is World Wish Day.

I've made mine already.

And my wish was to have Hari Kondabolu and Anavad Pal on this week's bugle.

What a waste of a wish.

Well,

you could have wished for anything.

I could have done, but this is what I've wanted, and this is what I've got.

So

I'm a bit wary now because my last wish on last year's Make a Wish Day came true, but was misheard.

As I asked for a really flash car, I don't know why it's not really my thing, but instead I woke up in a swimming costume made of mutton with facial hair like a circus performer.

The genie in question had misheard my request as wanting a Lamborghini clown clowntash rather than a

genie clowntash.

Anyway, buglers, tomorrow, World Wish Day.

Please, we're giving you one free wish, courtesy of the bugle.

So please make your wish in the following gap.

Well, that was your chance.

Quick disclaimer: the bugle is not responsible for the failure of your wish to come true.

The bugle is not responsible if your wish does come true and leads inadvertently or otherwise to civil and or criminal court cases arising from the fulfillment of said wish.

Your free wish must have been made in in the gap which followed me saying, Please make your wish in the following gap.

That gap has now concluded.

You may continue to make wishes here and hereafter, but those wishes will not be demarcated as your free bugle wish.

That's your own wish.

It's much less likely to come true, probably 40 to 45 percent less likely.

Subsequent wishes made by listening to this bit for a second, third, or any subsequent time will not be validated.

If a wish does come true, the bugle is entitled to 20% of any financial profit or any other category of benefit ranging from credit for medical breakthroughs to international peace prizes.

If your one free wish was to receive two more free wishes, your extra free wishes are invalid, and you do not receive a re-wish on the first wish.

You absolute smartars.

Don't wish for anything filthy.

It's not that kind of show.

Also, if your one free wish was for everyone else's free wish not to come true, please stop listening to this podcast.

You are not in our target demographic.

Anyway, I hope you

made use of that, Buglers.

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

This week, we have the latest update from the NFL draft, which is still going on, as we recall, and will be carrying on until the start of the season.

The latest from it, Mike Plantagenet, has been picked up as a 45th round selection by the Carolina Panthers, Plantagenet out of Nebraska State University.

Well, they'll be looking to use the 6'9 inch, 366-pound Hugens, just a mill around on the sidelines looking intimidating.

Garrett Ilk Jr., the punt avoider from Chicken State, he's on his way to the Jacksonville Jaguars.

He's a 174th round pickup for the Jags.

They're looking at using Ilk Jr.

to fill up the Gatorade fridge when it's running low.

And book Ubers for the Jags mascot, Jackson Deville, to get home after the game.

Big two-way opportunity for Ilk Jr.

And Torrent Lovestring, the inverted snout tackle from Votre Dame, he's been picked up in the 247th round by the Denver Broncos to analyze catch-up usage patterns on a hot dog stand outside their stadium.

So, still some big opportunities for the young college players, and we'll have full coverage of that over the next four months.

That section in the bin.

Andy, can I have a quickly ask about the make-a-wish thing?

I have a technical economics question.

So, if somebody made a wish for inheriting generational wealth, does the Bugle get 20% of their generational wealth?

Okay, I guess it does if it comes true.

Yes.

Yeah.

So, I mean,

it gets complex from a legal perspective.

This is more than a podcast now.

It's a hedge fund.

Essentially, that's always been my dream, Anivab.

As you well know, this is merely a front for my efforts to become a hedge fund billionaire.

Top story this week.

Canada says go f yourself to the American presidents, albeit indirectly by voting for its own parliament.

The country that gave the world, Margaret Atwood, author of the predictive historical non-fiction classic The Handmaid's Tale, has swung conclusively behind absolutely whoever was not the most Trump-like candidate.

Mark Carney, the self-styled thinking technocratic bankers, technocratic banker, managed to lead the recently beleaguered Liberal Party to victory, having taken over from Justin Trudeau's Prime Minister and Liberal leader just a month and a half ago when the Liberals were lagging in the polls.

The Conservative leader, Pierre Polyev, had been expected to become the next Prime Minister before A, Carney took over from Trudeau, and B, Donald Trump and his maelstrom of mayhem made Canada think, hang on, is a pro-Trump, Trumply and Trump alike definitely right for Canada now?

And they came up with the answer, no, it isn't.

So, A, well done, Canada.

B, thank you, Canada.

And C, those are two very, very low bars that

you've crossed to get gratitude and congratulations.

I know both of you have been voting numerous times in the Canadian election to help Canada avoid becoming the 51st state of the USA.

Which is so absurd, the idea that it'll be the 51st state, because the size of Canada, you can divvy up that baby for at least another 20 states.

One state, that's ridiculous.

Why do you think, Harry, that Canada is a nation of 40 million people with vast natural resources?

It's in the top 10 to 12 richest countries in the world on most measures.

Why do you think it did not fancy the idea of being the new North Dakota?

Why have they turned against that alluring opportunity?

I think it's stage fright.

I think they like being behind the scenes.

I think they like

kind of not having the pressure of being part of the U.S.

You know, it's hard.

You know, you're at it's like saying, Robin, do you want to take over for Batman?

It's like, well, I'm not used to that.

I'm used to being Robin.

I don't have any special

utility belts, and I don't even know how to drive.

He's always driving me around.

No,

it's stage fright.

They're afraid.

They're afraid of taking it.

But that's, you know, I don't blame them.

It's big.

It's big to be the new North Dakota.

That's asking a lot.

Anavab, obviously, this

Canada's essential rejection of Trump's invitation to join the USA has left the way open for India to become the 51st state of America and eventually, you know, through sheer weight of numbers,

take over the USA and incorporate it as a small part of Uttar Pradesh.

So, I mean, this, again, it's, you know, the pieces are constantly shifting in the modern global political landscape.

They are indeed, Andy.

In fact, if you visit parts of New Jersey, I think it already has happened.

I think there is a significant takeover.

But this, this i'm fascinated by a different thing um i don't think too many central bankers have won world elections and if i'm uh

if i'm not wrong um mark carney was the central banker of your country andy and he was yes saw it saw it through um the the covet pandemic and it is nearly unheard of that a foreign person would become the head of a central bank.

But Britain, I think, is quite open to who its central bankers are, as technocrats.

But as far as the- Well, I mean, we've always been open to

overseas people taking high positions in our country, whether that's manager of the England football team or indeed monarch, if we go back to the 18th century and various other times of our history.

So that's the thing.

You incorporate skill sets.

And

his essential, from what I read, his essential claim was that I was a really good central banker, which is not the sexiest election campaign, especially if they've just had Justin Trudeau.

But that clearly was enough.

So that's how much they hate anything to do with Donald Trump, clearly.

Yes.

And in fact, the Conservative leader, Pierre Polyev,

appears to have lost his seat as we record.

He was certainly projected to do that.

I don't know if it's been confirmed

yet.

And to really rub it in, this his seat was the Carlton constituency near Ottawa, to really rub it in, he lost it to a Liberal candidate who sounds, and I can't work out if he sounds like an AI-generated cartoon Trump supporter or an AI-generated person to make Trump supporters angry.

He's called Bruce Fanjoy.

And

to even further rub it in for right-wing Trumperance, Bruce Fanjoy lives in a carbon-neutral home he built himself.

Anyway, it's, you know,

for those of us who have been struggling with some of the results of global democracy of late, this is

a better one, certainly.

He sounds like a betting app.

I would bet on that app.

That sounds like it'd be like cricket betting app.

That sounds like a,

you know, one of Mark Arney's speeches, I was listening yesterday, he spent 20 minutes talking about interest rates and how he manages interest rates.

And people were going crazy, like it was some sort of an erotic speech.

Well, I say everything is changing.

You know, what

you know, people have, I think there is a demand, not just for sort of

blandness.

I think people want active tedium now in politics.

I think, you know,

going beyond just being a bit neutral and non-committal, that they want someone who can talk like a central banker about stuff that central bankers talk about.

America News now, and well, looking more specifically at America and your president, Hari, the Bugle.

Stop calling him that.

Why do you have to put it that way?

My president just say the president of the United States.

Your personal president,

your inspiration, your touchstone.

He's been busy on social media again.

Now, the Bugle prides itself on having hugely influential listeners in the world of politics around the world.

And it turns out that Donald Trump must be one of them because the Bugle has been taking a very strong anti-Vladimir Putin line for a very long time now.

We've been banging this particular drum since way before the current Ukraine war, which is more than three years old now.

We've been taking it, since that war was even a glint in a paranoid wannabe Stalin's eye.

And finally...

Our skepticism about the Kremlin Gremlin has been picked up by no less a figure than the president of the USA, Donald Trump, who is not on our voluntary subscribers list, but may be an occasional listener.

And he has finally got on board the anti-Putin train by posting a social media message saying, Vladimir, stop.

This after the latest Russian strikes on Kiev.

I mean, this is something of an about turn for Trump, who previously basically gone with a players-going to play attitude towards Putin.

To be fair, Andy, he was getting a wedgie at the time when he asked Putin to stop.

I think that's very important to note.

You know, and it sounds childish, Vladimir's stop.

It sounds like something a president or world leader wouldn't say, but people aren't looking at what FDR wrote to Hitler.

Adolph, cut it out, or I'm telling mom.

And

there's precedent for this.

I don't know what the problem is.

Yep.

I mean, he wrote the stop in capital letters.

So, you know, he must have really meant it for at least the three and a half seconds it took him to

post the message.

It's pronounced stop.

It's pronounced stop.

I have a quick question for both of you because you're both, you know,

versed with the world of realpolitik and global diplomacy.

Because then, this is very similar.

I've seen this diplomacy, it's very similar to an Indian uncle after nine beers at an off-site in Thailand.

So, if this is

so,

I can write down some notes for the future of diplomacy.

That's where the game is going.

Can you do an impression of

that, Cole?

It's exactly what Donald Trump did.

Stop it!

Stop it!

Stop it!

Stop!

It's just a noise.

So

the demand for Putin to stop, it's unclear how successful this will be long term.

There is some talk of

a short ceasefire,

although generally when ceasefires happen,

they cease during

the duration it takes to say the word cease.

And as soon as the fire bit of ceasefire comes in, the firing

starts again.

But

I mean, Trump must have been very disappointed after Putin launched

this latest savagery on Kiev, betraying the trust and love that Trump has shown him.

I mean, maybe...

Trump is something of an ingenue at times.

Maybe he's too trusting, too dough-eyed, too optimistic for his own good.

He thought Putin was was a man of his word, a trustworthy egg in the omelette of international politics, and yet he's been let down once again.

And so you can see why he's

just glowing,

more orange with frustration even than an average weak.

Well, he said that he felt that Putin was tapping him along.

Yes.

And by tapping, he means tapping that ass.

Putin's been tapping that ass the whole time.

Yes.

I mean, for him to come to the conclusion that Putin might not be entirely trustworthy.

I mean, you know, the phrase, no shit, Sherlock, which is, of course, one of Conan Doll's more disappointing short stories and certainly the one who got

the most litres of prune juice.

I mean, it's

such behavior

would only have been suspected by anyone who's watched or read or listened to any news at any point in the last 25 years.

Maybe Trump doesn't fit into that

niche demographic.

But trusting Putin now,

you know, after everything he's done in over 25 years now, basically running Russia.

It's like Little Red Riding Hood having had one grandmother eaten by a wolf, then not only bringing along her other grandmother to see the wolf, but also a couple of great aunts and smearing them head to toe in a tasty Venetian ju.

It's

beyond naive.

I mean,

he's saying

basically he's starting to not trust Putin, but at the same time, like the U.S.

proposed that Moscow retain the territory it captured as a way to to end the war, you know, the Crimean peninsula be kept by Russia.

So, like, as much as they're like questioning, he's questioning

Putin's integrity, they're still willing to like give them everything.

Basically, you agreed to let Russia win, and then we're good?

That's all you have to do is let Russia win.

When has capitulating to a European dictator after he seizes land through force not led to a change of behavior?

Name one notable example, perhaps from the first half of the 20th century, that is subject to countless documentaries that proves this strategy won't work.

You know, I have to say, the BBC News podcast I listen to every day is not covering the romantic angle that Hurry has just brought up.

You

The fact that there might be something quasi-sexual going on here.

Now,

I have a question for you, gentlemen.

Do you think a former KGB officer who has a lifelong reputation of being duplicitous and specializing in subterfuge is actually like that?

I think that's what Tony Trump is going to say.

I think he's raising a fundamental moral question.

He's asking the question Schopenhauer or Plato would ask.

I mean, it's so hard to tell.

Maybe you can understand that, you know, if Putin is so obviously, without wishing to oversimplify things, a baddie that maybe Trump assumes

he's in extremely deep cover.

I don't know.

Maybe he's, I don't know, not

just

second guessing him, but

fourth guessing him, maybe 100th guessing him.

It's so hard.

There's so many nuances in this.

I guess the concern for Trump would be that if a good friend like Putin is tapping him along and betraying him, him you know who else should he not be trusting is Elon not a real friend is is Heggie truly capable of genuine love is is is Victor from Budapest really up for a two-week lads-only holiday in Ibiza we don't know

and of course King Charles recently invited Donald Trump to the UK for a for a state visit um maybe he's invited him not to praise him but to prank him a bucket of ice on the head or maybe even to arrest him for treason on the grounds that he's basically invalidated the US constitution and the declaration of independence so america technically operates under uk law again uh so under those laws trump is yeah but he's he's going to have the rulebook thrown at him i agree with that honk or maybe he's going to try and trick him into buying windsor castle by telling him he could turn it into a golf course or trap him in a dungeon at the tower of london by promising him he can have sex with the ghost of anne boleyn we just don't know we don't know what the the hidden plans are all we do know is that the last time trump came here the queen and i think we talked about this on the bugle wore a teardrop brooch in one of the

great subliminal messages that any sitting monarch has ever had.

Because you only wear a teardrop brooch if you've killed a head of state.

And it was one of the most impressive things that the late Queen ever did for me.

Have sex with the ghost of Anne Boleyn, he says.

My God.

The thing is that Trump always seems like he wants to give everyone a chance.

Like, even after he bombed a bunch of Houthi rebel sites in Yemen, he was asked why he did that without going to the UN.

And he said, you know, most of these Houthi terrorists are really bad guys.

Maybe some of them are nice.

He said that.

So

maybe he gives everybody a chance.

Like, maybe he thinks Trump is, sorry, Putin is, you know, maybe he just wants to eat mangoes and relax

at the end of April.

You just, you know, he just wants to give him that chance.

While, of course,

ukraine gets completely destroyed but you know there's got to be some loss and i think the three-day ceasefire uh i haven't checked the exact dates but i think it does coincide with the world snooker final so that you know there might be something that we can work with there um i mean in terms of the the state of global politics um with uh the the hurricane of hubris the cataclysm of that is the leader of the free world uh it promised uh prompted the european commission president ursila von der Leyen um the week before last to say the west as we knew it no longer exists.

And the UN has since come under increasing pressure to introduce a new direction to rebalance the political compass.

Suggestions put to the UN have included New West, East Squared, Niaus, an average of the four prime directions, and Ruerk, a completely new direction that blends elements of old west with hints of both compass-based directions such as south with non-compass-based orientations such as backwards a bit, diagonal as you look at it, and over there.

So we will have full coverage of the new replacement for the West as it evolves over the next hundred years.

Oh, this is brilliant, Andy.

So, what would Turkey be?

Middle-earth?

I think so.

Pete Hegseth news now.

Those were words that I was, yeah, would have quite happily gone through the entire millennium without saying.

But no longer possible, Hari, because he is your defense secretary, the defense secretary of your heart and your soul.

And he's,

well, he's been criticized, I think, very unfairly for sharing military secrets

on a messaging app.

I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that?

Yeah,

he's sent messages about

a strike in Yemen.

once to

by accident to the editor of the Atlantic, which is a notable publication.

And he also sent it to his family, which is very bizarre to throw into a family group chat.

But,

you know, people have been questioning, like, why does he...

And also, he has set up technology, apparently, where

he can get his iPhone and his signal messages sent to a computer in the Pentagon, which totally, you know, subverts what the security is trying to do.

Like, he's he's security, it's breaching all sorts of protocol so he can get his messages.

And I've been trying to figure out why is he doing this since an assistant could easily check his phone outside and then let him know, oh, you have a text that's important.

And I figured out what's happening here.

He's juggling multiple women.

There's no other possible explanation.

He's juggling multiple women.

So he needs the messages because he can't let other people know he's juggling multiple women.

And that would explain why that signal conversation happened.

He's like, his wife is probably like,

are you having sex with somebody else?

And he's like,

we're about to strike Yemen right now.

We're just about to strike Yemen.

I'm sorry.

I find that explanation far more reassuring for the future peace and stability of the world than

what other people have suggested.

But it's just reckless.

It's not that he's an incompetent boob.

He's just a womanizer.

That is in the great the grand tradition of uh senior American political figures.

So, uh I mean, of course, you know, there was one argument, uh, Anabab, that the the American people voted democratically in the election last year for uh a president who would inevitably appoint people who would jeopardize the security of the nation through a cocktail of idiocy and arrogance.

So this is really just the democratic will of the American people um in action, is it not?

I mean, it is very democratic, because what is more democratic, Andy, than somebody, you know, putting out the nuclear codes to his Uber Eats guy?

What's nothing wrong with it?

Many years ago, I worked in journalism, as you know, and

at the office I was at,

one of the managers accidentally wrote an email to the whole office with the subject

clearly he was writing to his wife.

The subject said, I hate your sister, and CC'd the whole office.

This is a bit like that.

But I think, here's my vote is for Harry as a BBC News correspondent, because what we're really missing, both with Trump and with Hexet, is the quasi-sexual angle that nobody's bringing in.

He's having six affairs.

This is absolutely correct.

Where is that in the world news?

He's having six affairs.

He needs six phones.

This is completely logical.

Well, because the other possibility is painful.

If it's not that, that means an unqualified moron was named to the position by another unqualified moron

and confirmed by a Congress full of cowards.

Yeah,

back on.

That's not as much fun.

That's the most civilized nation in the world, America.

That couldn't possibly, possibly have happened.

In terms of the security protocols that

may have been broken, they have updated officially the list of security protocols for the Defense Secretary.

One is: don't assume no one is trying to get hold of American state secrets.

There is a better than 0.01% chance that someone is trying to get hold of American state secrets.

It's quite a lot better than 0.001.

It's almost 100% better.

But the point is, it's not zero, so don't risk it.

Point two: don't wear a t-shirt with a Duke's bookum Newcomb slogan with a silhouette of the country you're planning to attack.

And new point three for the security protocols is if you're getting hammered in a bar with an attractive young woman or man with a hint of an Eastern European accent who suggests playing truth or dare, make a polite excuse and leave.

So hopefully we'll avoid issues such as this

in the future.

Again, in terms of

the democratisation of politics,

and again, Trump has been heavily criticised for being anti-democratic, for things like viciously attacking the independence of the judiciary and stuff like that.

Fripperies like that, just ephemeral

flower in

the winds of destiny.

But

surely getting this kind of stuff out into the public domain is allowing the American public to express their opinions and have a say on issues of military strategy, which given that it's their taxpayers' money that is being spent on these airstrikes, they should have a say.

And plans are afoot.

It's just been confirmed, actually,

to enable registered Trump worshippers to vote.

on American military action, a range of options for

how to conduct the initial strike from five initial strategic choices, as well as an A to F of contingency plans and an integer from one to twenty to decide how many years the US should be intractably ensconced in an inescapable ground war before finally finding a way of extricating itself, leaving a legacy of grief, instability and chaos.

And personally, I think having

you as American voters having a say in that, I think is probably going to make America more stable and responsible as an international peacekeeping force.

It's going to make for a hell of an Instagram poll.

Oh, if only that weren't so far away from the truth.

No, it's not far at all.

It's a very good point, actually.

I have a question for Harry.

Do you think it's that wrong, just based on what Andy said, that, say, a manager of an IHOP in North Dakota should be able to decide which of the four important Iranian sites in Tehran to bomb?

I mean, does he know any less or more than the head of, say, Iranian,

you know, someone at the pentagon well the late night ships at ihub do get a bit rough

they can be they can be tricky to to

to negotiate so

god none of this none of this sounds great like the idea of a manager of an ihub becoming defense secretary like is that that weird anymore nothing that's not weird no that's a that could happen

That's a, that's, not only is it not weird, it's, if anything, something of a pipe dream, something of a, you know, like a utopian ideal that we should be striving for to make things better.

When you become manager of an IHOP, you think about your career trajectory, and now it's realistic to say defense secretary.

Before

it was like, maybe I can get a job in corporate, or I could get a job at Applebee's or another chain restaurant in the United States.

But no, now the horizon, my God, you can.

It's

the land of opportunity.

Yeah.

You know, in 2015, the Foreign Minister of India went to the United Nations and read out an hour-long speech on India's position on something, but it was actually accidentally the speech of the Prime Minister of Portugal.

And at the time, we thought that was the worst thing that could have possibly happened.

But clearly, that seems almost

majestic and regal in relation to this.

Tits on flags news now, and a school district in Texas has banned the use of the state flag of Virginia

due to the presence on that flag of a two-dimensional drawing of a naked female breast because the children of Texas need to be protected from such harrowingly pornographic imagery.

I'm just looking at the Virginia flag and crest

now, and

the breast in question, Hari, and you are our two-dimensional representations of human anatomy correspondent, of course, is basically just a dot and then a curved line shaped like

the letter J,

I guess.

You can say it's an A cup.

It's an A cup, Andy.

Yeah.

So, I mean,

obviously

you've been educated in America.

If you'd been to that as a child, I mean, how different do you think your life?

I mean, it would have gone completely off the rails, presumably, and

you wouldn't be talking to me now.

Well,

the bigger issue here is not so much that this flag

might corrupt the youth of Texas.

It's the fact that apparently the state of Texas does not have the internet.

That to me

is the bigger story here.

That is so true.

My life would have been so different without the the internet.

I just feel bad for Virtus because, you know, this goddess kills a tyrant, which they depict on the flag, right?

And all they want to do is Janet Jackson her about the boob.

It's like,

she just killed a tyrant, bro.

And all you're concerned about is a lonely A cup.

Like, this is terrible.

What an awful thing.

She deserves more than that for killing that tyrant.

We're just talking about a lone breast.

Out of here,

the last time someone's masturbated to that image, it was the early 1800s.

Like, honestly.

I think that was one of the ambitions, things you had to do to get into the Royal Society of Historians.

I think you had to masturbate to a photograph of antiquity, I think, was one of the rules.

I just think, you know, this raises a very good question of

why did people start covering up?

You know, because all the way into, because by the time you get to like Chengis Khan and stuff, they're all covered up.

But, and the weather would have been around the same, but the Greco-Romans, you know, they were big into semi-nudity.

Yeah, and I mean,

look, I mean, in many ways, the peak era of the pornographic vase was, you know, nearly two and a half thousand years ago now.

Again, very appropriate.

So, I mean, yeah, the ancient, the ancient world feared not the gratuitous naked representation of the human form.

And

so, you know, quite how we've gone this far backwards, where who knows?

Pope news now.

And, well, exciting times for many bugle listeners who have dreamt of becoming Pope.

Good luck to everyone who's entered the competition and applied to the Vatican to be the new Pope.

This follows the death of Pope Francis at the age of 88 a couple of weeks ago.

There is apparently

a battle for the future direction of the Catholic Church, progress versus tradition, round 325, I think it is, in Catholic history.

And

Pope Francis was something of a reformer and

a man of humanity.

But it seems to me that the impending pop-off, or a conclave

as it's also known, is going to be a battle between traditionalists who don't like the way the modern church has gone and want to go back to institutionalized abuse and mass cover-ups

and ideally torture as well, and the progressives who want the Catholic Church to embrace at least elements of modernity.

I should emphasise I'm completely neutral in this, as long-term buglers will know.

I'm a lapsed Jew, so I'm entirely neutral.

I mean, obviously, all Catholics are essentially lapsed Jews as well, when you think about it technically.

But let's not delve into that

particular

semantic argument.

Personally, I think it's a good chance for the Catholic Church to break from tradition and appoint a Jewish pope first for all or a Muslim pope.

Time to build bridges and understanding or ideally an atheist pope to bring things into the modern world.

Are either of you guys throwing your mitres into the ring?

I think,

well, first of all, I hope it's a black cardinal because I think that that would be a huge change

for the Catholic Church.

And the black cardinal that I'm proposing is St.

Louis Cardinal shortstop Ozzie Smith.

All right.

Well, he's got Cardinal in the name.

Yeah.

Exactly.

There must be one bugler that knows what the hell I'm talking about.

You know, from the 1980s and early 90s, the shortstop of the St.

Louis Cardinals, Ozzie Smith.

Huge.

I mean, what do you think

he'd bring to

the role of Pope other than

athleticism and a good throwing arm?

Well, I think,

he would be an anti-molestation pope, which is really where the battle is right now in that conclave.

It's between the pro and the anti-molestation wings.

And before Pope Francis, it had been a pro-molestation pope for centuries, really.

And he, you know, he,

you know, when Francis came, it was an anti-molestation regime.

Or as

they like to say

amongst Catholics, that's when the good times ended.

Can I just say, you know, I've been following the betting quite closely.

I get very excited by papal betting, just as a thing.

All of us have, you know, quirks.

You like snooker and it's like that.

So

what they give you is they give you whether they're liberal or conservative.

That's all they give you.

Basically, in the resume, they try to tell you, okay, this candidate, there's a a betting odds, eight to three, eight to one.

And then they tell you, well, he's a bit of a fascist, or he's very left-wing, he's communist.

But I don't want to know that stuff.

What I really want to know is, you know, likes badminton, or

enjoys Pink Floyd, you know, or once went to Goa on vacation and stole a Dutch person's wallet.

You know, like, those are the little things, you know, involved in a petty feud on a Thai beach.

You know, those would be interesting things to know about a possible pope

because you'd do a background check if you applied for any job, wouldn't you?

Well, absolutely.

And if you are going to be betting on the next book, please conclave responsibly.

And if you'll forgive me for

repeating a joke that was on last week's news quiz, there are just

a few days left to submit your application before the papal conclave.

Now, in a conclave, they all meet facing towards the middle.

Then when a decision is made, they turn outwards to announce it to the world, at which point

it changes from a conclave to a conflex.

I thought Bugle fans might enjoy that more than News Chris fans.

UK news now.

And well, since we were last with you, the big news here has been the Supreme Court ruling on,

well, sex and gender and the meaning of the word woman in a specific piece of legislation.

And it's a hugely complicated topic, and I don't really want to do it without giving it full scope, which we were planning to do last week.

I had to postpone last week's show.

So we will come back to that.

The one thing I want to say about it now is that

when the Supreme Court judge, Lord Hodge, delivered the judgment,

he said, we counsel against reading this judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another.

It is not, at which point everyone interpreted the judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another.

But it's 2025.

That's just the way we roll, not just as a nation, but as a species.

So, anyway, we'll come back.

We'll come back to that because, like I say,

it's a very difficult,

very difficult subject for comedy, very difficult subjects philosophically, I think.

We'll come back to it and do it in proper depth at some point soon.

So, in other British news,

well, possibly, you know, one of the biggest stories, the biggest scandals to hit this nation, one of the biggest disputes,

a dispute between historians over whether the Bayer Tapestry contains 93 or 94 penises.

There is considerable scholastic dispute over whether

a shape dangling from one of the characters in the Bayer Tapestry, the tapestry that was

commemorating the Battle of Hastings in 1066 that was

commissioned shortly afterwards.

So it's almost a thousand years old.

It's about 70 meters long.

It's an amazing thing.

If you're ever knocking around Bayer, go and have a look at it

in northern France.

But anyway, in the words of Macbeth himself, is this a dagger I see before me?

No, it's a Willie.

Because there's some dispute over whether

this controversial potential 94th Wang is a dagger or a penis.

Now, already, look, it must be said, 93 fallacies in a tapestry seems more than enough,

more than average.

But, I mean, this is, you know, I don't think we will really be at ease as a nation until we know for sure whether or not this object is the 94th Bayer Tapestry penis or not.

Now, it's good that we have...

you two on the show to bring some objectivity to this this highly uh highly complex and controversial debate.

Anivab, what's your view on

this matter?

Well, it's a great question, Andy.

In fact, all these years I've been on the vehicle, I was really hoping you'd ask me this question: Were there penises in medieval India in battles?

Just a question we haven't brought up in a long time.

Here's the thing: I am a keen observer of nudity and history, and

I can't find that many

you know, just wide open, no underwear armies.

I don't know what was going on with you guys, but big, big battles, say the British versus Tipu Sultan, Battle of Serangapatnam.

No willies, none, very covered up.

We go even further back, the siege of Chitto, one of the massive battles in India with Rajputs versus the Mughals, completely covered up,

very few signs of anything dangling about.

So, and this is a hot country where you could essentially fight in the nude.

But there was decorum.

People broke for dinner, people were well dressed, Saturdays and Sundays were off.

I'm not quite sure what was going on in 1066

that just allowed this sort of flagrant, you know,

maybe it was a weapon, it was a kind of distraction that the other side.

Well, I mean, distraction is an interesting theory uh hari because obviously the the result of the battle of hastings in 1066 was an away win for the for the normans um over the uh the the home the home team um but yeah the the rules of war in 1066 did specifically say don't try and put your opponents off by waggling your your danglers around so i mean is this evidence that that William the Conqueror and the Normans were cheating to try and distract King Harold.

And when he was looking at everyone's junk, they shot him in the eye with an arrow.

First of all, let me correct you because because you said earlier that this is a debate amongst historians.

Is that correct?

Yes.

It's a debate amongst male historians.

I think that it's very important to point out.

Because essentially, this tapestry,

you know,

where was it found?

An ancient frat house?

Like, it's not.

It's not a work of art, really.

It's just a bunch of horse dicks and then a few dicks of

soldiers, and then some questionable dicks.

Like, this is the game of how many dicks are in this tapestry, that's a frat house game that belongs with a bunch of frat brothers playing beer pong, counting dicks.

This is this is not

real scholarship, right?

Well, that's an interesting way of looking at it.

Harry could be onto something, Andy.

I mean,

it could be onto something.

I mean, in that, the real battle could have fully clothed people, you know, very dignified people, and then the people doing the Bayo Tapestry decided to just fk around a little bit.

Anyway, we will have full coverage of the resolution of this debate over the 94th Bayo Tapestry penis as it goes presumably through the courts over many years.

And I don't know if it'll have to be re-embroidered to show the phallus more clearly or de-phallused to make it more clearly a dagger.

We don't know yet everything is uh is quite literally up in the air uh well it's actually in a in a sealed cabinet in the in the museum in northern france uh well that brings us to the end of this week's this week's bugle it feels like we've covered a range of

well kind of

different it's it's hard the the world is is is is it's difficult at the moment it's going through a tricky millennium as we've discussed on this show uh just some breaking news reaching us um the uh

after leading team gb to a superb first place and gold medal at the 2025 World Regretting Championships, the Team GB skipper Thramston Brampville said the team was very disappointed with the result.

And that's the kind of class that gets you to the absolute top in that game.

Anyway, thank you for listening to this week's Bugle.

Let's do some plugs.

Hari, what have you got to plug right now?

Well, I'll be performing May 28th in New Haven, Connecticut at Toad's Place.

And then May 29th, I got a big show in New York City at the Gramercy.

I haven't played my hometown in a long time.

So if you're a New York City City Bugle fan, the Gramercy on May 29th, May 30th and 31st at the Houston Punchline.

And then finally, to round out my spring touring, June 1st at Bugle Stronghold, Lafayette, Louisiana.

At Club 337.

So if there's a Bugle fan somewhere in Louisiana, I'll be in the state on June 1st.

I do admire the fact that Lafayette has named its comedy club after the 337 scored by Hanif Mohammed for Pakistan against West Indies in 1958.

That's a big score.

It was a huge score, very long.

I think the longest innings in the history of Test cricket.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that.

Anyway, Aniba, plug.

Yeah.

I've got a series of shows coming up in the UK between June and July, which I'll be posting on my social media.

And yeah, I'll also be in a few cities in Europe.

I'll be in Rotterdam, Hague, a few other places.

Well,

I have nothing much to plug.

My tour is very nearly over.

There's one more show in London.

I will be doing a show at the Froome Festival.

I'm not sure it's on sale as yet, but do keep an eye on that if you're in the Froome area.

And you can listen to the news quiz via BBC Sound.

We're two shows into an eight-show run.

And if you're a cricket fan, which I sincerely hope you are, Bugles, otherwise, this podcast would have been a bit of a disappointment and confusion to you over the years.

I have a new column at The Observer talking about cricket.

Anyway, thank you for listening this week.

We will be back next week with all the latest from this absurd planet.

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.