Peace On Earth!

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4331 of The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world, albeit a visual world that now looks at itself in the mirror, then instantly shies away from its own reflection, saying, ah, what have I become I'm joined today from here well not from here in London actually from Birmingham

where she is on tour launching her book and indeed launching the bugle publishing empire which currently is her book it's Alice Fraser hello Alice hello Andy hello buglers I'm currently in the bathroom of a premier inn having made a

sound booth of my son's cot

and a shower curtain.

These are the glamorous high times in which we live.

This is the rock and roll touring.

I like to leave a mess behind me because my children enjoy putting things into and taking them out of the bin.

Rock and roll.

Rock and roll.

So, are you actually sitting in the bath as you record?

You are sitting in the bath.

I'm sitting, kneeling by the side of the bath in my accustomed posture for washing my children.

Right.

But so you've got all the core musculature being built up from all that child washing, putting you in a prime position for this recording.

And peak physical fitness, Andy.

When I said in the bath, I didn't mean, are you actually having a bath?

Anyway.

I mean, look,

that's for the only fans.

The Bugle Only fans.

The next thing that Chris Skinner will launch as part of the Bugle Empire is the behind the scenes after dark bugle.

Alice doing point of view videos like, I'm watching you like my children

through a podcast.

Andy in a bath with a glass of wine and a printed out A4 picture of Florence Nightingale.

What goes on tour stays on tour.

Also, John Digis, as you've heard, from New York City, one of the very finest Mexican comedians on the...

Sorry, American.

I'm always getting things like that mixed up these days.

It's Josh Gondelman.

Hello.

Thank you so much for having me in the United States.

This is President's Day, which we still celebrate, despite the idea of presidents having lost some of their luster over the past few years.

It feels a little bit like celebrating Woody Allen Movies Day or

P.

Diddy production on some of your favorite records day.

Yes, strange times.

We will touch more on that as the show goes on.

We're recording on the 17th of February, 2025.

By the time you hear this, it will be at the very least the 18th of February.

On which day in 1930, a historic moment Elm Farm Ollie became the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft

didn't pilot the aircraft so it's not that impressive but the first time a cow had been put for whatever reason also

the first cow to be milked in an aircraft and I mean, I guess if you're going to send a cow for a ride in a fixed-wing aircraft, you want to break more than one record.

You want it to be more than just the first cow in an aircraft.

So milking it, I guess, is the obvious thing to do.

Breeding it, that's logistically problematic.

You need two animals or you wreck another minotaur, which didn't go so well first time.

Or turning it into a burger, which would be a tricky cleanup in a 1930s aircraft.

But it must have been disappointing for the cow.

Do you not think?

Yeah, after that,

the joy and exhilaration.

of escaping from the exploitations of life on solid ground.

There's few moments of hope that they can now live out their true destiny as just a cow.

And then, with the fastened seatbelt stein still on, someone starts having a go at the others.

It's got to be disappointing.

I mean, how many terrible things do you have to do before a right brother gets called a wrong brother?

I bet it's like alien abductions of people.

Like, I bet the other cows didn't believe that that happened when they tried to tell them.

Also,

they went through some turbulence, and that's how cheese was discovered, I believe.

On this day, or in fact, tomorrow, the 18th of February, 1955,

was the beginning of Operation Teapot.

Do either of you know what Operation Teapot was?

It sounds quite charming, doesn't it?

It does sound charming.

Is it like one of those things that teenage boys tell you about?

Does it involve genetic engineering to make the population both short and stout?

Sadly not.

I mean it sounds like that might be the case.

Sounds like it might be an episode of a children's puppet show or a witty spoof comedy spy cape or maybe a euphemism for resolving a minor family dispute via the tried and tested medium of a nice cup of tea.

But no, it was the 1950s.

It was a nuclear testing program.

Operation Teapot was 14 nuclear test explosions in Nevada in 1955.

But did they add the milk first and was it from a cow in an aeroplane?

Well, these are all questions that my research hasn't entirely covered.

But,

yeah, the first one boomed out on the 18th of February with a yield of 1.2 kilotons, which to me sounds a bit over-brewed as tea goes.

I tend to go with one gram of tea leaves per 100 mil of water.

Brew it for two minutes if you're having it without milk, four to five minutes if you're having it with milk.

1.2 kilotons of radioactive devastation, though.

That puts me off my biscuits.

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

And well, today, the 17th of February, is Random Acts of Kindness Day, despite which in London a conference is taking place entitled the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, which has brought right-wingers of the world congealed together in London to complain about the dangerous prevalence of compassion, facts, and hope that have somehow remained partly at large in the public realm.

And their efforts will not cease until they're all stamped out.

Kemi Badenock, the latest interim leader of the political party, just before he recorded, has given a speech

claiming that Western civilization is in crisis, which is a fair point.

And if you want evidence of that, Kemi Badenock is giving a speech at a right-wing conference in London.

There you go.

She's got a point.

She said these words.

Whether it's pronouns or DEI or climate activism, these issues aren't about kindness.

They're about control.

Alternatively, Kemi, they're about trying to let people live the lives they want to live, partially righting some of the wrongs of history and trying to make sure that history doesn't itself become history because there's no no longer a planet for historians to historicise on.

But I, you know, there's always two ways of head-butting the same potato.

She also added, We have limited time, and every second spent debating what a woman is is a second lost from dealing with challenges.

Well, for a start, if that is the limit of your multitasking capability, get the f out of frontline politics.

It's not for you.

Also, maybe try saying that without being the leader of a party that has just failed to deal with challenges for approximately 440 million consecutive seconds.

Anyway, today is Random Acts of Kindness Day, despite this conference in London.

And now it's more important than ever, would you not say?

Yes, I think the thing about Random Acts of Kindness Day, Andy, is you have to decide at the beginning of the day whether to lean into the kindness or the randomness.

So

if you want to be truly random with your acts of kindness,

the sort of kindness ends up going a bit by the wayside.

You know, give a sandwich to a passing billionaire, tax break to a homeless guy, play some Mozart to an iguana, tell a baby he's beautiful and should dump that jerk.

Like it doesn't necessarily connect.

That's right.

And there are some acts of kindness that, when applied randomly, are

have a sinister tone, right?

You don't want to be dispersing massages at random throughout the city.

As much as the kindness in your heart might be flowing out through your hands, I don't think that's how random recipients will recipient.

But, you know, it's more important than ever this day, Random Acts of Kindness Day, given that so many governments are elected on programs of random acts of cruelty or on the international stage random acts of absolute mayhem-inducing derangement.

So, Random Acts of Kindness Day is, you know, one of the few things we need to cling to

in 2025.

So, some bugle suggestions for you, buglers, on random acts of kindness that you might like to try.

Send someone some flowers, not too many.

Anything over 100 becomes a logistical nightmare.

Offer to pay for someone else's coffee, unless they are a commercial coffee importer, importer, in which case your generosity could end up costing you several hundred thousand pounds.

Smile at a stranger on a public transport, but it's very important that you do this for less than five minutes at a stretch and

without humming the tune from Harry Nielsen's hit song, I can't live if living is without you.

Leave some money hidden in your local playground for local kids to find.

Low denomination coins, ideally.

Not a briefcase with £100,000 of cash that will result in the child who finds it being implicated in local gangland turf wars.

And go into your local cat shelter and release a box of a hundred mice into the building.

They will absolutely love it.

Alternatively, go to your local library and write some extra chapters in books so the next person to take that book out gets a free extra novel.

I think that's got to be worth it.

Some books really need

a bit extra.

Give up your seat to a total stranger.

This one is directed specifically at members of parliament.

And also,

hire a lion outfit, go to a zoo, wander up to the zebra enclosure, and tearfully say, I'm so sorry for everything.

And finally, find a professional football referee, or indeed any code of football, any sports referee or umpire, and send them an anonymous message saying, I know on the balance of probabilities, you're almost certainly not involved in a covert conspiracy to make my team and or favourite player lose.

But could you please have a word with your colleagues who quite clearly are?

So anyway, those are your bugle random acts of kindness.

Do go and make the world a better.

Or also go up to a complete stranger and tell them how awesome the bugle podcast is.

You can do that as well.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week: peace in our time.

Donald Trump has announced that he will negotiate a peace between Russia and Russia, bringing an end to the

war in Ukraine.

The details and logistics still remain to

be hammered out.

They have insisted, or Trump and Russia, that Ukraine will be involved in the negotiations.

It does appear at this stage that Ukraine will be involved in the negotiations in the same way that a French goose is involved in the annual French foie gras of the year competition.

But

I mean, it's exciting times for fans of giving in to the demands of despots and dictators, Josh.

And, you know, at last America has a president who's prepared to set aside the hackneyed old, we will not give in to terrorists and dictators shtick that I think has held you back as a nation for far too long.

That's right.

It's time to start capitulating.

That's what 2025 is all about.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is being solved by a bilateral broout between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

They allegedly were on the phone for 90 minutes

hashing out details.

But I imagine most of that call was,

you hang up first.

No, you hang up first.

No, you hang up first.

Just being besties.

It doesn't seem good, right?

It feels like we're really selling out Ukraine.

And it is also

a little bit of a red flag that the United States is sending Marco Rubio to negotiate these peace talks,

a politician who couldn't negotiate peace between Florida and Florida while he was an official there.

And that they're doing it in Saudi Arabia, aka the fairness capital of the world.

I mean, strange times.

I mean, Trump is, of course, no stranger to being accused of channeling various 1930s political leaders.

It's just Neville Chamberlain is a new one.

And at least Chamberlain,

I think, had good intentions.

Fair play to Trump for broadening his repertoire.

Still waiting for him to do Gandhi.

which could go very badly wrong.

And also, ironically, still waiting for him to have even a partial go, American President Franklin D.

Roosevelt.

But anyway,

he's getting on the 30s bandwagon.

I have in my hand a tiny piece of paper.

It's a beautiful piece of paper, the best piece of paper in the world.

There's no doubt Trump would have said to himself when he was practicing.

Alice, I mean, a lot of people have said this, you know, it's basically Trump has essentially legalized crime in America with his presidential pardons and

the sort of justification of the January the 6th insurrection.

He's essentially

now legalizing war crimes as well.

You trained as a lawyer for many years, but obviously you saw the way the wind was blowing in the world.

You jumped the law ship.

You must be absolutely delighted with your career choice.

Well, Andy, you are so right.

I did indeed spend seven years of my life studying law and then practicing law.

And I remember thinking, well, this can't last.

Hundreds of years of painstakingly accumulated rules, formalizing

our intuitive sense of interpersonal fairness so that it can be applied outwards in the context of large and complex institutions, counterbalancing as far as reasonably possible the biases and corruptions of individuals within those systems and grindingly correcting slow errors as applied by people of very moral character.

I thought, chuck it, boring.

A world governed by laws is a world for women and the weak, Andy.

Let's go back.

to a world where my only job is to pick a man strong enough to hit my enemies, but kind enough only to hit me when he thinks it's going to be educational.

Fair.

But also, I would like to make a note, if the world is going to descend into Hobbesian chaos, I'd like it to happen quickly while I've still got these childbearing hips to bring to market.

Three to five years in the tank on the baby-making front.

So, chop, chop.

It's also tough, right?

Emmanuel Macron called a meeting of European heads of state to figure out how they're going to deal with this situation.

And if there's one thing I've learned from talking on this podcast with people from the UK, when you turn against all of Europe, things don't usually go your way.

Gier Starmer, right, has vowed to keep the United States and Europe from drifting apart, which I think is a noble goal, but I doubt it because adding a third so rarely helps keep a relationship together.

It's just going to make things really weird to explain to Australia at parties before the inevitable separation.

Well, I mean, J.D.

Vance has been taking these swings at Europe, saying

they've abandoned the fundamental Western value of letting everyone scream obscenities into each other's mouths as loudly as they possibly can,

which is what held Europe up in the past.

I don't know.

I think every nation is going to have to reckon in its own way with these impossible problems that are caused by the pincer movement of climate wars ruining the place you live and the information superhighway fire hosing everyone who's even got one single eyeball or earball with a thunder funnel of hyper-condensed rage juice.

But I don't know if that's the way.

Yeah.

I mean, J.D.

Vance lecturing Europe on free speech and democracy.

Sorry, let me just check what story we were doing.

Was it J.D.

Vance accusing Europe of not upholding free speech or the White House banning associated press journalists from the Oval Office because they used the term Gulf of Mexico instead of the Trumply imposed Gulf of America?

I forget which free speech story we were.

I think it was the Vance one.

Are we doing Elon Musk bringing back free speech to Twitter, or are we doing Elon Musk

shadow banning people who say mean things about him?

Which one of those ones?

They were actively redacting government websites.

Well,

look, I mean, J.D.

Vance obviously isn't well known as an AI-generated temple of smuggering, rancor, and freestyle nonsensicalism.

But I'd love to point out all the different ways in which this is rampagingly hypocritical.

You know, this is coming from a country which I was also reading on The Guardian.

They've banned a kid's book by the actor

Julianne Moore about a kid with freckles has been banned from some schools as part of the so-called compliance review to stop children reading about freckles, I think.

Also, we don't even want kids to know about people with a little melanin in their skin.

Never mind.

Black history.

They're out on freckles.

That's bad.

In February?

That's Black History Month.

That's cold.

Obviously, we in Europe,

we need to learn from the American commitment to freedom of speech and from freedom of chi children's book reading.

J.D.

Vance is saying a lot about, like, very confidently about the history of Europe and the ways in which Europe is failing its own history.

Josh, I don't know anything about the American education system, and I'm not going to ask, but I'm going to tell you something about the American education system

that seems to reward people who say things with confidence that sound vaguely plausible, even when the things they say are very easily disprovable by literally any further reading of the subject, like even the second half of the sentence they're quoting.

That seems like what would happen if Dunning Kruger and then they had a baby.

And you know what they say about the Dunning-Kruger effect?

I don't, which makes me an expert.

They say the less you know about the Dunning-Kruger effect, the more you know about the Dunning-Kruger effect.

And that's fundamentally the same joke formulated slightly differently, but I like them both.

So

we're leaving them in.

This is the bugle.

We've been doing that for nearly 18 years.

It is like, you guys are focusing on the negatives, right?

JD Vance went to the Munich Security Conference, which is the Coachella for Secretaries of State, and

he took shots at Europe, right?

Saying the continent is being undermined by enemies within, which with this launch of a racially charged, internationally directed diatribe, finally, white Christian nationalists have their own version of Kendrick Lamar's not like us.

So this is huge.

This is big.

After the Grammys in the Super Bowl, they needed a win.

The security conference was supposed to be, this was what they were supposed to be there discussing European nations boosting defense spending and how to end the conflict in Ukraine without giving in to Russia, which, whoops.

But Vance kind of made it all about himself, which is the most American thing he could have done, especially when you consider he did it by speaking English while in a European country.

German Chancellor Olaf Schultz decried Vance's statement as the U.S.

perpetrating outsider meddling in another region's politics, to which the people of Nicaragua and Syria replied, come on, dude, this is nothing.

They said it in unison.

It was crazy.

Look, I mean, like I say, I'd love to point out all the ways in which Vance was, as I say, rampagingly hypocritical, but I can't.

I can't point out all the ways for various reasons.

One, although we have some flexibility in how long this show is, our audience research of Bugle Listener suggests that you do generally prefer a podcast that is less than 700 hours long.

Reason two, I'm bored of looking at my pet globe every morning, cuddling it whilst we both weep and whimpering, what happened to you?

Three, I'm from Europe.

I don't have any freedom of speech.

I've no outlet for saying what I want to say.

Oh, maybe he's onto something.

Four, we have to respect the mandate that the Trump Vance Cartel has.

They were democratically elected by the people of America on an explicit, clearly stated platform of rampaging hypocrisy.

They were democratically elected by the people of America to impose that rampaging hypocrisy on not just America itself, but also the rest of the world.

And if we and the rest of the world had not wanted them to do this, then we should have taken the time and effort to become uncontrollable gazillionaire techrepreneurs and bought ourselves control of American politics just like Elon Musk did.

That option was open to us and we were too f ⁇ ing lazy to take it.

Another reason that I can't point out all hypocrisies is that, well, if free speech results in J.D.

Vance, maybe we're better off without it.

And also, because maybe in Europe, we labor with this historically resonant sense that free speech carries an element of risk with it and a contract of responsibility because we've seen how it can metastasise into regimes which rise to power, aided by that freedom of speech, which then crush and stifle it to further their own ends.

But America might be less attuned to that risk because it's earlier on in the process.

It's going through that process right now.

So it doesn't have quite the perspective that we have as an older, more experienced continent on the way down.

We are still, as we record, waiting for further details, as I said, of Trump's peace proposal for the Ukraine, turning the Donbass region into a billionaires-only crazy golf course seems to be on the table.

Also, asking Putin.

Hey, all billionaire golf is crazy golf.

If I may quote a line from the highly influential Radio 4 late-night sitcom, The Department, from over 20 years ago, crazy golf is about where you play it, not how you play it.

Apparently, they're also going to ask Vladimir Putin nicely only to invade one former Soviet Union member state every

four-year Olympic cycle.

They're looking at the relocating of all Ukrainians to Paraguay and giving Alaska back to Russia in exchange for Garry Kasparov's 15-year reign as world chess champion, which will now be awarded to Defence Secretary Peter Hegseth.

So there are a number of negotiation ploys on the table.

Also, Vladimir Putin has demanded a special t-shirt with the slogan, I committed mass war crimes, and all I got was this active endorsement from the so-called leader of the free world.

So we will have full updates on

this.

I do think a chess title being

given ceremonially to Pete Hegseth is pretty appropriate because he's drunk on the job so often he might actually knock over a queen at some point.

Harrowing, heartbreaking decline of a nation that once stood as a beacon of hope for a better world, even if you always had to ignore quite a lot of what it actually did to see it that way, news now.

And well, this is when looking at America, in America now,

Josh,

the

I mean, the sort of I don't know quite how to describe the last month of executive decisions

other than, I don't know, just a mad person swinging

a badger with advanced diarrhea around its head in your living room.

It's made an absolute mess of your sofas.

But

huge job cuts in

the public sector as the Trump regime continues to wield the sledgehammer of devastation with which America voted to crack itself in the nuts.

And various parts of the public sector are being aggressively demolished, including

the

IRS.

Yeah, that's right.

Back home, as if we weren't causing enough trouble abroad, but back at home, the United States government continues to dismantle itself.

We all know about the Ouroboros, right?

The image of a snake eating its own tail, but our current situation is so much dumber than that.

It is like a snake sticking its head up its own ass.

This is obviously Trump and his cronies tearing apart the government to enrich themselves, of course, but it's also this classic American conservative process of destroying government institutions so they can then explain that they don't work, right?

They're causing the problem and then they're complaining about it.

Republicans are the party of whiskey dick, effectively.

The IRS who administrates our taxation,

they've been told to lay off thousands.

of workers, which is going to be huge for a massive constituency of Trump voters, people who have or are planning to commit tax fraud.

So that is like a lot of the people in his corner.

Similarly, Elon Musk's Doge program, which just bile rises in my throat as I say it, has proposed huge cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Center for Disease Control.

And there have been warnings that this could create the conditions for a new pandemic.

But it's like, I doubt it.

We haven't had a new pandemic in what?

five years?

This is not gonna happen, idiots.

Well, also, I mean, you've sh you your your health secretary robert f kennedy surely wouldn't allow just a a pandemic to to sweep the land unchecked would he he look he's busy he's too busy to think about pandemics because he's announced a war on antidepressants causing people across the country to be torn between doubling up on their meds and rationing them for when the government enacts mental health prohibition and a younger generation of kennedys ironically starts selling bootleg ssris at think easies across the land look i don't i

I don't think you need to worry about a new pandemic with Kennedy on the job.

That man will run the pandemic over in his car and eat it before he lets it

steal the health, the precious health of our children.

I find the IRS firings are just sort of a very delicious cherry on a little irony cake.

Ah, yes, to save the government money, we must fire the people who get the government their money.

But, you know, like I want to give these guys credit.

I want to give them the, I want to assume that they are

believe the nonsense that they're spouting at the very least.

I feel like the current wave towards efficiency in the government may be a disaster, as we all fear it may be, but it may also be effective.

In which case, what a disaster.

Have these boys failed to realize the government is meant to be slow and inefficient?

You know, the Chinese Communist Party very efficiently managed to kill more of their own people than both sides in World War II.

You don't want an efficient f ⁇ ing government.

You want a government that moves slowly, constantly hampered by its own checks and balances, because otherwise you end up with a lean, efficient, startup-minded government that moves fast and breaks shit.

And at government size, when you're breaking shit, the stuff you're breaking is massive.

Yep.

And that's what's happening.

Last Thursday, several employees overseeing America's nuclear stockpile were fired, which best case scenario, as Alice, as you were alluding to, that will keep us out of future nuclear war because everyone who knows how to turn the thing on has been let go.

So there's the silver lighting there.

The Trump administration then learned what had happened.

They didn't mean to lay off all the people that control the nukes.

They've been attempting to rehire several key Department of Energy figures, but they can't because no one has their contact info.

They're going to have to resort to a Craigslist misconnection.

Like, I was an elected and deeply compromised bureaucrat oligarch.

You were a longtime federal employee screaming about the threat of nuclear apocalypse, while I had a team of soulless mercenaries escort you out of the building.

Call me sometime before the world ends.

But this is this is the problem with bringing a startup mentality to government cuts because you can't just control Zed when you f it.

Like you can't just, oh, what's our last saved version of the government?

It doesn't work like that.

The actual thing that has been giving me some hope, right, is that the court orders have been creating barriers to some of this worst executive overreach by Trump and Musk.

But if they have their way, within weeks, our entire federal government would be like a bunch of cops, one Aunt Dean's pretzel stand, and a few bathrooms with strict gender delineation.

Like the whole country is an airport at 5 a.m.

Yeah, I can't wait for the bathrooms to get even more specific about gender presentation.

So we've got women's bathrooms, but like on the left-hand side, you have the double Ds, and on the right-hand side, you have your A cups.

And you can only go in the one that's appropriately gendered.

I guess when it comes to nuclear safety, that

I guess, you know, Trump is heavily supported by the Christian right.

So I guess the assumption is that God will just look after the nuclear weapons for America.

He, of course, famously saved Donald Trump, despite Trump explicitly contravening all ten of his commandments on a minute-by-minute basis for his entire life.

But it just goes to show how God is merciful, I guess.

Or it could go to show that they're hoping that with unattended nuclear weapons, maybe we'll all meet God sooner.

Yes.

It's all,

to be honest, Buglers, I'm struggling to see the funny side of things at the moment.

I know.

That often happens when I talk about things.

People, I don't know why they would think this is funny.

On the bright side, Andy,

the Danish people are exercising their democratic voice by

uniting to declare that they they want to buy California after having been personally insulted by Trump saying that he would buy Greenland.

I mean, I think this is one of the, like you say, this is

a shaft of hope.

But also, I think, I mean, so it's a petition.

That's what he called it.

Sorry.

A petition.

Over 200,000 people have signed it.

A shaft of hope, a glance of kindness.

And more of that in the Dancy Lagarde book that is now available, purchased by the website.

The seminal vesicle of justice.

Just ushering prosperity out through the orbs of future.

But actually, I mean, it started as a joke petition for Denmark to buy California.

But actually, when you think of it, only 38% of voters in California voted for Trump in the presidential election.

I think he will be bang up for this.

I can see Trump getting on board with getting rid rid of California.

The petition highlighted Denmark's commitment to rule of law, universal healthcare and fact-based politics.

So, I mean, I think California might go for this as well.

So I can't see anything stopping this happening, Josh.

I can't see why either side would not want this to go through.

It's kind of a hand-in-glove fit.

I guess to the people of California, as an American, I will say, get ready to start speaking whatever language they use over there.

I want to say Dutch.

Is it Dutch?

I honestly think we should do it just so all the people across America who think that California is like a hotbed of communism can see what socialism actually looks like.

Just to be like, oh, you think California wants to give health care to everyone?

Well, get a load of when it's California, Denmark.

I mean,

I feel like Hollywood would rebel because for a couple of reasons.

First of all, every movie going forward would end up being a Viking movie if the Danes owned California.

And then secondly,

the hotness level of California compared to the greater Denmark area would go down because everyone in Denmark is very hot.

It's unclear

what the top level of Danish politics thinks about this.

We've not heard from their Prime Minister or their monarch, King Frederick X.

Was that King Frederick formerly known as Twitter?

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to read that.

I think it's King Frederick X, the black civil rights revolutionary.

So I always picture him.

Just one more piece of Trump legislation from the last week or so.

And

like I say, I'm finding it hard to see the pot.

I know decluttering is all the rage these days, but throwing out absolutely everything democracy once held dear, I think that's taking it a little step too far.

But anyway, Donald Trump pledged last week to rid America of one of its most long-standing lethal curses on the nation's health, wealth, and happiness, a scourge of ordinary American life that has destroyed too many families, too many lives, too many hopes, and dreams.

And that scourge is paper straws.

Finally, finally, Josh, you have a politician who is prepared to stand up to the scourge of, he said they explode.

I know paper straws aren't great, but exploding, I mean, it does show perhaps that a paper straw has a sufficient level of political awareness to destroy itself rather than provide life-sustaining liquid to Donald Trump.

So that may just be a personal thing for him.

I mean, it's hard to see how a lot of Trump's actions, particularly this one, are going to...

put more burgers in the baps of ordinary hard-working Americans or improve healthcare or reduce gun violence or create job opportunities.

But at least now, Josh, they'll be able to drink their milkshakes without their straws going a bit soggy.

Or even worse, just having to drink stuff straight out of a cup into their mouths like a f ⁇ ing adult.

So, I mean, this is this is a huge, huge news.

Yeah, I think, like you said, Trump is willing to stand up to paper straws.

Uh, you get the same effect leaving them in a glass of water for five to 10 minutes

that they can be defeated that way.

Yeah, he signed an executive order shifting the U.S.

back towards plastic straws, which is not necessary, frankly.

I travel all over the United States and I see a paper straw like once a year.

It is like doing a lunar eclipse.

You only stumble across them occasionally and they're generally underwhelming.

Plastic straws, they're important for people with certain disabilities, but they're not great for the environment to use uniformly.

But we've, as a nation, already given up on that fight.

The only people who are still sticking with paper straws in 2025 are Greta Thunberg herself and baristas so aggressively vegan that they won't even chew on their own fingernails.

Worst of all, Trump's push to get rid of paper straws and bring back plastic is stealing thunder from RFK Jr.'s pledge to do away with vaccines and bring back polio.

So they really gotta figure out their messaging.

Look, I'm conflicted on this.

I think this, you know, surely I feel there is a middle ground here.

You've got on one end of the spectrum, you've got paper straws, flimsy, bad for use by toddlers, disabled people, and the rare people who happen to have wet mouths and want to drink wet drinks.

And on the other end of the spectrum, plastic straws, evil incarnate, only embraced by cackling villains who hate the planet and punk turtles that want piercings.

The reality is...

We have the material science to do an alternative to either of these things.

I had a straw the other day that was made out of potato magic.

Another one made out of straw.

Maybe we should bring back just straws made of straw.

I feel that we can meet somewhere in the middle.

Maybe this is the unifying, the final, the bipartisan issue that could bring us all together.

Well, it is.

And you don't want it to become just a personal

personal attack on Trump for this kind of thing.

You don't want it to descend into a straw man argument really.

So I mean it just seemed that some one of us had to say that.

I'm prepared to did we have to maybe

not.

America of course has long been the proud spiritual home of completely unnecessary bits of plastic.

And in particular I remember staying in a hotel room in America and the and which had a little sign in the bathroom saying

you know we want to reduce our environmental footprint so please reuse your towel and uh the the coffee cup in the the room was a plastic cup wrapped in a plastic wrapper with a plastic coffee stirrer also wrapped in a plastic wrapper separately so that's right i mean that's a good level of commitment to unnecessary plastic that i think other countries whilst they may aspire to i'm not sure they can ever fully achieve

that's right i i think that's consistent right what they're what they're saying is we want emissions to go down and we're not going to do shit.

So you got to air dry that towel because we're going plastic on plastic on plastic on plastic.

The Secretary of State for the Eradication of All Hope, Drellard Butt Clark III, has also announced that trying to reduce plastic pollution is, quotes, the kind of woke bullshit that would have lost us the first and second world wars and stated that well over 80% of the world's oceans is still water rather than plastic.

So everyone should shut the f ⁇ up and also that future generations will enjoy clearing it up because it'll give them something to do.

He also pointed out that if we put enough straws in the oceans then lazy whales could fashion some form of snorkel out of them so they don't have to go all the way to the surface when they want to breathe.

So, you know, let's try and keep some perspective.

In more renaming news now, obviously renaming stuff is all the rage these days, Josh.

An American military fort has had its name changed from Fort Liberty, which it was renamed to under Joe Biden, in an effort to remove things named after Confederate figures from the American Civil War.

So it was changed from Fort Liberty, a dangerously un-American name, of course, these days, to Fort Bragg, which is bright on brand for the egocratic nation that America is now.

The original Fort Bragg name honoured a Confederate general.

and slave owner, Braxton Bragg.

So people got very excited that this, you know, finally, it was going to be named once again after someone who actively fought to preserve slavery but when it was renamed it's uh it re it said it renamed the legacy of the world war ii hero private first class ronald l bragg a completely different bragg one who fought against fascism um rather than in favor of of slavery so and people are angry about this that it's not it's not been renamed after enough of a

so i mean this is

So basically, they wanted to service the people who wanted it to be called Fort Bragg again, but also the Congress has banned the naming of federal

military installations

after people who fought against

the Republic.

So

it's just...

It's just an awkward situation.

And I can imagine the Bright Spark who was like, well, what if we name it after another person called Bragg?

And then we win.

This is a win-win situation.

We don't offend the left and we don't offend the right.

And instead, they've managed to offend everybody, including, I assume, poor Ronald Bragg, who's dead.

I do think it was a good gambit.

I think you got to try, right?

Because all the people, the people that wanted it named after the other Bragg are like generationally racist idiots.

That's like who that's who you were trying to trick.

So I think it was a good gambit.

I do think if you want to name stuff after people who

wanted to own and abuse other people and enslave them and who wanted to fight against America for that right, we should have to name terrible things.

A highway rest stop toilet that doesn't work.

Name that after a Confederate general, right?

Keep the memory alive in the way that it is deserved.

Well, I mean, that might be appropriate for

Braxton Bragg, General Braxton Bragg, who I was reading a little bit about him.

Someone

wrote a book about

he was the least popular Confederate general, which presumably is a reasonably hotly contested title.

He was described by fellow Confederates as a merciless tyrant, obstinate but without firmness, ruthless without enterprise, crafty yet without stratagem, suspicious, envious, jealous, vain, a bantam in success, and a dunghill in disaster.

Now, for our weekly challenge, buglers, can any of you think of any contemporary American public figure who also meets that description?

If you can, do send us a postcard.

I think, though, those things might have been meant as compliments.

We should take that into account.

A North American war update now.

And well, the war between the USA and Canada, its

future 51st date if Donald Trump gets its way, has hotted up still further.

At a hockey match, ice hockey match between Canada and USA in Montreal, there was more anthem booing, which we mentioned a few weeks ago at hockey matches in Canada.

And then when the game started, there were three fights in the first nine seconds.

That is more than you would get in actual fighting.

Now, I know they stopped the clock when the fights happened, but the first fight broke out with two seconds on the clock.

They restarted the game, and one second later, the second fight broke out.

Then, after an epic six seconds of peace, the third fight broke out.

I mean, this is, for a start, proper sport.

But also, I mean, I guess it shows, you know, what's

the future of North America, Josh?

Well, I do think maybe this can give us a little hope for the future of Americans refusing to commit war crimes, right?

Because they all abided by the laws of hockey fights, which is you are in possession of two knives and yet you fight exclusively with fists and shirts as your weapons.

So I think that while this seems like to be a little international instability, I do like that our nation is for once obeying the rules of war.

Science news now and BP, the celebrity

fossil fuels fans, have announced a fundamental reset after a big slump in their annual profits and threats from what's described as an activist investor that is pushing the company back towards

a more wholesale commitment to accelerating the end of the world.

This news came

after it was revealed that January was the hottest January in the history of all Januaries.

There's some talk of an offset program that so we can actually take some some weather from February 1684,

one of the coldest ever winters, to try to keep the February 2025 average down so we don't double up with the hottest ever February as well.

To do that, we'll have to, there'll be like an exchange program where we have to start wearing ridiculous late 17th century wigs and running a few witch trials.

But I think that's a price worth paying.

I mean, this, I mean, the whole thing.

We're seeing an increasing

turning against the concept of even bothering trying to

save the world.

You've got Trump's drill, baby, drill mantra, which I'd assumed was actually about Trump's plan to trepan every single member of the US population by drilling through their skull.

But maybe that's metaphorical.

I'm not quite sure.

But Alice, you are our

oil industry correspondent.

Just bring us up to date with exactly what BP's doing.

So BP is going to a fundamental reset back to its core values of

drilling and soaking birds directly in pools of oil.

They have promised to reset, I presume, also the environment by pressing their finger down on one on the North Pole and one on Ecuador to do a hard reset of the Earth

once we run out of oil.

This is all basically

the activist hedge fund, Elliott Investment Management, has built a stake in BP in the hopes of sort of breaking it up for parts.

and BP is rebelling against this by going back to its original habit of sitting on a pile of babies cackling wildly and throwing torches into orphanages, I assume.

Just to cover our legal

metaphorical babies in actual orphanages.

Let me make that clear.

They are they are metaphorical orphanages, but actual babies.

Yeah, BP is going back to its roots of making this planet less hospitable to any species with roots.

I mean, this kind of thing is going to remain a problem until big business convinces itself that it will be able to make as much money from saving the world as it has from destroying it.

But we still seem some way off from reaching that point.

Yeah, I think all these companies kind of feel like after the world ends, we'll have cockroaches, Twinkies, and shareholder value will be the three things that are preserved after the apocalypse.

I know this is my fault, but I want to admit it.

When I saw that the BP was going to fundamentally reset their business, I thought for just a sliver of a second until I clicked on what the article said that meant, was that this could be good news.

And that was stupid of me.

There's no such thing.

It's 2025.

The reset is predicted to be a return to its reliance on fossil fuels and a shift away from green energy, which is mostly what they're already doing.

They only have about 10% of their business in renewable energy, right?

Which is like me saying, I'm going to fundamentally reset my diet and go back to eating mostly french fries and some salad.

I'm going to cut down on that salad proportion.

It's, I think in America, there's some frustration, right, that politicians don't stand for anything and that

there's this awareness that, right, that our political apparatus is maybe not meeting the moment

of encroaching fascism.

But I do think it is inspirational to look into the private sector and see the way people are banding together and taking a stand against the environment.

That is bold, it's unpopular, but they're doing it, damn it.

Egg protein news now.

And well, this is a subject that for too long we've shied away from on the bugle.

Egg proteins.

Alice, this story also encompasses potatoes.

These are your two predominant fields of scientific expertise, I believe, potatoes and egg protein.

Yes, yes, Andy, at last, combined the two round white things that you can feed to children on a journey.

Just boil them, stick them in a baby.

That's what I say.

This is an amazing thing, particularly in light of the increasing egg worries caused by the not yet a pandemic of bird flu.

There are farmers in New Zealand, molecular farmers, and they're putting egg proteins into potatoes so that your potatoes at last

will not just be empty carbohydrates, but now also...

empty carbohydrate and proteins that you can eat chips and pretend that that is good for you.

I feel like this is this is just what what every bodybuilder has always been wanting is to dig out some fresh protein from the ground.

Apparently it doesn't taste particularly disgusting, but

look, I anticipate eating it very enthusiastically, probably as part of my OnlyFans.

It's a great thing.

It's a great thing for people who like potatoes but have felt barred from them by the keto diet.

I think it's beautiful that

finally,

by making an egg that grows inside a potato, science has paved the way for Earth's first naturally occurring frittata.

I think for too long,

we've been stuck with man-made synthetic frittatae, and now they can grow out of the earth like strawberries

and elm trees.

I am a little worried that because obviously we can't bring this this to market fully yet.

So it's going to require some more research and cultivation.

And so I think what scientists have actually done is found a way to make eggs more expensive.

And to that I say, not the time, scientists.

Look, I feel like this is step one in the long-held dream of mine of making potatoes sentient.

Yeah, I mean, out of all the

kind of sci-fi movies in which the world is taken taken over by things, potatoes have never had a real fair crack of the whip, Alice.

And I think the sentient potato taking over the world at the moment, actually it doesn't really sound like

a dystopian science fiction movie.

It sounds more like some kind of utopian pipe dream that sadly we will never live to see come to fruition.

Yeah, that's right.

I mean, like, how much worse would it be if a potato was in charge?

Like, can we grow several thousand of them and have them staff our federal government?

Well, I mean, this was another thing with Trump.

Basically, his entire foreign policy is based on trick-or-treat diplomacy, which I guess is understandable given that he is a president whose daily facial care regime is based on Halloween pumpkin.

So maybe that's progress.

Right, that brings us to the end of this week's chirpier than ever bugle.

Thank you very much for listening.

Don't forget to buy your tickets to my remaining tour shows.

Details at andy'sultsman.co.uk.

Alice, anything to plug?

Yes, I will be doing a show in Leeds and one in London.

A Passion for Passion, the show selling the book A Passion for Passion.

Come, I will sign almost anything.

The London show is on the 1st of March at the Omnibus Theatre in Clapham.

The seats are limited, so please jump on that if you are in London.

I think the Leeds tickets are selling okay, surprisingly, for this tour.

But otherwise, if you can't get to one of those shows, buy the book, A Passion for Passion.

Also, listen to Realms Unknown, which is a podcast about science fiction and fantasy, speculative fiction.

And I'm just about to record that in about an hour.

It's going to be delightful with the excellent Jackie Cation.

So please look that up.

Other than that, patreon.com slash Alice Fraser for my twice-weekly writers' meetings.

If you want to write something with me, you can do that.

That's patreon.com/slash Alice Fraser.

Josh, Oh my gosh, so much to plug, Andy.

Let's say, please, if you're interested in Josh Gondelman-related news and occurrences, check out my newsletter.

That's marvelous.

It's at joshgondelman.substack.com, at least for the time being.

And it's got all my tour dates and it's full of pep talks and jokes and it's a lot of fun, I think.

And all the new special coming out soon, news on it there.

Yeah, I think that's the best.

I will be in Ridgefield, Connecticut on March 11th, and then tickets will go on sale soon, but I'm going to be at the Comedy Attic in Bloomington, Indiana, where I think there are a bunch of buglers

April 4th and 5th.

So I'd love to see you there.

And then I will not go on any further.

Thank you for seating the floor for plugs.

Well, that's a good time to end this bugle because Alex's laptop in the bath appears to have run out of battery.

Like a metaphor for hope and democracy around the world.

Thank you for listening buglers.

We will be back next week.

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.