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The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4328 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world with me, Andy Zoltzmann.

It is the 20th of January 2025.

It is 5pm UK time, midday Washington, DC time and as we record in Washington DC I don't know someone somewhere is having a bath a dog is maybe chasing a stick in the park

a kid is watching Sesame Street there's a bench somewhere a guy is learning how to play the F shop caught on his guitar two grandmothers are signing up for an online wrestling course A worm is trying to chat itself.

I just don't want to think about anything else that might be happening in DC right now.

Joining me to talk about how lovely the trees look at this time of year, the best temperature of a hot chocolate, and whether a packet of spaghetti is better than a bunch of flowers, and other such topics.

Firstly, from San Francisco, resplendent in a bugle bobble hat.

It's NATO Green.

Hello, Nato.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

Andy, I feel like I should just start with an update.

The last time I was on in November,

I said in the context of a bit that I might have cancer.

And it was at the time true that I might have, but a lot of buglers wrote to me and said, Are you okay?

So I had a biopsy.

I had a prostate biopsy.

And I don't know if you realize this, but

and I didn't realize it until it was happening to me.

But a biopsy is where they cut out part of your body from the inside and take it out.

And so

the good news is that I ended up, I don't have cancer.

The bad news is that now I have to engage with the world.

So, but

one of the, as with the side effects of the biopsy, they said there might be some blood in your shit piss and come for a while.

And so

let's, I don't want to be too graphic,

but Andy,

let's just say that I put the butt in abattoir.

On Christmas night, I called my hospital frantically.

I said, is my bathroom supposed to look like a crime scene in Dexter?

And because it's American healthcare, they said to have more fluids.

So

I don't have cancer.

I've stopped bleeding for the moment.

I've

started 2025 on a good note.

Thank you, Buglers, for your concern and your messages of compassion.

In my personal life, at the limits of my own skin, things are not getting worse immediately.

That's the best I have.

A message of hope for all America at this difficult time.

Well, that's that's uh that's great news, uh, NATO.

Also, joining us uh from here in London, it's Tiffany Stevenson.

Hello, Tiff.

Hello, I'm I'm joining you from the chilly enclave of Muswell Hill, which uh has been without get this is my peeve.

Um, I haven't had to go any have any horrifying checkups, so but I haven't had gas for for nine days which is unusual in this house because normally plenty of gas from me but uh yes um there was water got into the gas pipe so a whole section of of North London is sort of without gas so I've been working from the bed with my husband like grandma Josephine and Grandpa Bucket we're just in the bed with the duvets pulled up to our chin trying to keep warm and drinking hot chocolate which you did mention.

And I genuinely googled, this is how tragic I am yesterday.

Can Can you just heat up chocolate milk?

Because we had some chocolate milk, and I wanted, and I was like, can you just heat that up in the microwave?

And

does it become hot chocolate?

And it turns out it does.

Well, there we go.

So we've started with two good news stories on the bugle.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that run is going to continue.

Yeah, if all chocolate can be hot chocolate if you make it hot enough.

Yes.

We are recording on the 20th of January, as I said.

On this day, or the 21st of January, in 2021, 2013, 2009, 2005, 2001, 1997, 93, 89, 85, 81, 77, 73, 69, 65, 61, 57, 53, 49, 45, 41, and 37, a less stomach-churning U.S.

presidential inauguration was taking place.

And in some of those years, that is f ⁇ ing saying something.

Also on this day in 13 billion BC, the Big Bang happened, according to new research.

And the state of the universe now really shows how sometimes a soft rollout is better than a hard launch.

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

This week, How to Get Fit Using Only Existential Despair and Collective Guilt at the Failures of Civilization.

And also our

Bugle Young Peacebroker of the Year awards for any missions under the age of 60.

You can enter the Young Peacebroker of the award, just complete the following sentence.

I think everyone everywhere should learn to get along because dot dot dot and you need to finish that in no fewer than 3.2 million words plus supporting graphs and maps with some hastily drawn British lines on do send them in to the bugle London those sections in the bin

Top story this week yes it is re-inauguration day as the two parallel Americas rejoice stroke quiver at what America is doing to itself we are recording as I said as the inauguration is taking place

um in Washington DC 5 p.m.

UK, 9 a.m.

San Francisco, where NATO is.

I will admit, I wasn't going to watch it anyway for various reasons.

One, because I want to be able to look at my children in the eye with at least a vague scintilla of hope for humanity partially discernible in my face.

Two, because there's some sport on later, and I didn't want to have to watch it through a coating of vomit on my TV screen.

Three, because what's the f ⁇ ing point?

Four, because if it turns out to be really good, I can just watch Trump being inaugurated again in another four years' time and then another eight years' time.

Five, because I'm too busy writing down a list of all the reasons to be hopeful for America and the world.

I've set myself a target of two things, and I'm currently, let me just top them up, too short of that goal.

So,

even though we're recording during the inauguration, I wouldn't have been watching it anyway.

What about

how are you enjoying?

Well, I don't know if any are either of you currently watching it as we're recording.

No,

I'm not watching.

I'm not going to watch.

I would describe, Andy, the mood in America as miserable and dejected.

The

thing about,

it's so infuriating that the thing about the right is that they don't even seem to enjoy winning.

They seem as mad and miserable to be winning as they do when they're losing.

It's like,

you know, and the contrast to eight years ago when Trump was around the first inauguration in 2017 is quite striking because,

you know, I remember when, you know, there was all of this, you know, the Electoral College will stop him.

Oh, no, they won't.

You know, they won't certify the election.

Oh, they will.

The media will hold him to account.

Oh, they're not going to do that at all.

The courts will constrain him.

Oh, no, that's not going to happen, actually.

So

the

civil servants in the government bureaucracy will limit his worse.

Oh, no, that's not happening either.

I mean, it was just like one after another of

realizing that

our entire apparatus rests on

someone just respecting some basic norms that are fundamentally unenforceable.

Like, do you ever have the experience where you're like

in a car park and you're waiting for a parking space and someone comes in and takes the parking space and then you want to like drone strike their entire family

And then you realize that there's no higher authority that will enforce the social norms around queuing for a parking space.

That's kind of how American democracy works at this point.

And to give you a sense of my neighborhood, where I live in San Francisco, I live in a neighborhood called Bernal Heights.

My block voted for Kamala Harris by 91%.

So, and

seven of the remaining 9%,

it was those people were

literally having a stroke when they were filling out their ballot.

So,

there are fewer Trump voters in my neighborhood than people with HPV.

So,

the

so my, and it's, it's a hill, so

it's a very steep hill, narrow streets, and then at the top of the hill is a park with a gorgeous panoramic view of the city.

You should come visit.

And

so up in the neighborhood on the telephone polls this weekend, signs went up, invited the entire neighborhood to assemble at the top of the hill right now for a collective primal scream.

So that's what's going on in my neighborhood right now.

It might filter through just as we're recording this.

I did all the anger and jokes last time round.

Like this time, I think he's going to nail it.

I think he'll be fine if he gets the right crystals.

We're just going to girly him with JD Vance through this presidency.

Like, he's a Gemini gal.

He's just going to be hot yoga, Stanley Cups at press briefings, manifesting executive orders, you know, scheduling a pumpkin spice latte session with Rubio to talk about why China and India are being bitches.

And he's going to try and make himself look popular by giving back the kids their TikTok,

you know, before falling out with Bestie Musk over H-1B visas and having to go back to the vision board, which is like the drawing board, but

for girlies.

I mean, the world has seen some unwanted sequels in its time, as certain former Bugle co-hosts could probably testify.

But Trump versus Everything America Once Claimed to Stand For 2 was not particularly appetizing.

And

I just still can't quite get my head around how it's happened at NATO.

Essentially, this is, you know, America, basically the chickens enthusiastically welcoming the fox back into the coop, saying at last, someone who understands our needs and will govern in our interests.

Yeah, I mean, it's an especially depressing time to be a political comic because I'm already being reminded of the feeling, like, as a political comic, Trump is a speed up of my job.

Like, if this

were an assembly line, political comics would be losing their fingers.

And so, it's just like this endless fire hose of shit.

I started writing and preparing for today's show.

And by the time I went to sleep,

there was a news story about a Trump crypto scam that was underway.

And I was like, I can't be bothered.

Like, I just, I need, it's going to be a long 37 years of the Trump Reich, and I have to pace myself.

I have to space out these jokes.

And I mean,

what's comforting to me in this moment is I can go back to my natural state, which is hating the Democratic Party.

As a Democrat, hating the Democratic Party.

Andy,

I think I was on,

you know, in the early days of the Harris campaign when we had,

I had about

maybe a week and a half of hope.

That's a personal best, isn't it?

It was a record, yeah.

And,

you know, of my lifelong commitment to voting for Democrats while hating the Democrats.

And I guess this is what sports fans feels like when you're yelling at the screen, you know, he's open or whatever, except in my case, the opposing team is trying to win and my team is just, I guess, stretching while they run out the clock before they go to brunch.

So

well,

I was going to say, are they going to do that?

Are they just going to wait it out?

Because it just seems to be everyone, I mean, in both sides, it seems to be everyone at the upper echelons of like the sphere are like octogenarians.

I presume that's why they've moved the inauguration indoors today

because they literally might freeze to death.

It's minus 13.

So, like, they've even got Nelly to sing is hot in here in order to try and make you feel warmer.

I didn't know if you knew that Nelly was booked, but apparently, there's a country singer, Jason Aldean, the village people at the Liberty inaugural ball, one of three official balls marking Trump's return to office.

Unlike Hitler, who only had one official ball, this wannabe dictator has three.

What is interesting though, the performance at the the inauguration.

Did you say the village people said yes, Elton John said no?

I wasn't asked, but would have said maybe, but only if you can do my joke about Donald Trump and the sexy pumpkin.

And the village people

sort of defended their appearance.

They said their song YMCA is a global anthem that hopefully helps bring the country together after a tumultuous and divided campaign where our preferred candidate lost.

And, you know, I mean, if there is one thing America has not voted for, it is for national healing.

That is the absolute opposite of what that vote was about.

And also, if you're going to choose one 70s disco classic to

represent modern America, I don't know, bearing in mind who's going to be at the inauguration.

You've got Zuckerberg, Musk, and Bezos.

Maybe don't stop till you get enough.

More, more, more, the hustle, or I feel nothing.

Sorry, I feel love.

So I'm always forgetting the tennis angle on that one.

I mean, it is

the fact that Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Musk, I don't know what the collective noun is for tech plutocrats.

Is it a grovel, a betrayal, a shit brigade, a polyp, an objection, or a projectile diarrhea?

I forget, but there's definitely some term for...

I think a conspiracy of geeks.

We need to go back to calling them geeks because they keep calling themselves disruptors, you know, like, and that's their model, and that's why they voted for Trump.

Trump, you know, we're disruptors, we're disruptors.

Let's go back to calling them nerds and geeks and being really mean to them because I think phrasing them has got us nowhere.

Yes.

I mean, in terms of Trump as a disrupter disruptor as well, I mean, he's already seems to have announced a deluge of instant measures to further infectify the USA and its neighbouring countries.

And as the old saying goes, if you want to make an omelette, you have to whack the chicken in the face with a sledgehammer, then hurl a frying pan at a prague nun and urinate into the paddling pool.

So that's, you know, it's all starting again.

I mean, it's still a bit odd for me that he's

not in jail after his sentence to zero minutes in jail on the little-known 34-strikes and not-out regulation.

Let's not forget, Andy, that it not only is it inauguration day, but it's also the Martin Luther King holiday,

which is so like beyond,

it's like an affront to the idea of irony.

And it really recalls to mind the Martin Luther King quote: the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.

I would like to respectfully request of the Reverend Dr.

King to hurry it up a bit.

It's all bending quicker.

Yeah, the grade on that bend towards justice is

really

so imperceptible as a bend that it looks like a flat line

sometimes.

Dr.

King celebrated progress towards civil rights, and today we are inaugurating the man who single-handedly makes the argument against the innate superiority of the white race.

His guy, Steve Bannon, is a white supremacist.

Supremacist.

Supreme is such a strong term.

Not even like white people are fine too, I guess.

Steve Bannon looks like a toilet in Los Angeles after being ravaged by the wildfires in that he's cracked, blistered, white, and filled with shit.

It looks like a drop pasty.

Yeah.

I think, Tiff, I think you're right.

They had to move inside because it was too cold.

And this is the gang that wants to restore traditional masculinity

where men are men, only between 4 and 20 degrees Celsius.

Yeah, tough it out, guys.

You should be Wim Hoffing.

You should be doing special breathings through the entire inauguration, which will be interesting when

he gets sworn in.

That for me, I, you see, because in America, you say curse, but I like the idea to be literally sworn in.

Like, for

sake, we've got to swear him in.

Well, there's a swearing in and there's a swearing out, and they both generally happen at around about the same time.

I mean, it is odd, uh, you know, what when Trump will basically bring provocation, resentment, egotism, spite, incompetence, delusion, enmity, nastiness, temper, insincerity, acrimony, and laziness.

But you put it all together, you have the unfortunate acronym presidential.

But that is the world that we now live in, sadly, where unelectability is the new electability, wrong is the new right, fury is the new forgiveness, and treasonous destruction of the pillars of democracy is the new patriotism.

But strange times.

I guess one positive to come out of today so far is conclusive proof of the non-existence of God, which

might at least peel some divisions around the world.

Because Donald Trump arrived at St.

John's Church in Washington, D.C.

with his wife for a service ahead of the inauguration, and nothing.

Nothing from the big man.

Not a thunderbolt from the heavens, not even a darkening of the skies, or the sun blotted out by a swarm of rabid pheasants, or a rending of the ground, or a spontaneous melting of stained glass windows before they reconfigure into a picture of Jesus vomiting uncontrollably into a bucket of weeping puppies or even a voice from the heaven saying, come on, this is getting ridiculous now.

Nothing.

Nothing.

So at last we know God definitely doesn't exist.

Well, speaking of unelected people, Liz Truss is in Washington.

Yeah, you know, what's red, white and blue and looks like a

it's Truss in her MAGA hat.

I mean, she's really, she's really got in on the grift of, I think she was, she's been attending a lot of the rallies and conferences and telling everyone about a Liberty Belle showerhead, which has probably been cracked, and I'm not going to say how.

But yeah,

she's out there representing what I don't know, but she's there.

Liz Truss is just getting about because she was also at the fringe this year.

I don't know if you know this, NATO.

But Liz turned up to do a show at the Edinburgh Fringe, yeah, because she knows all about doing a five-week run and losing a fat fat ton of money.

She's not the only great figure of British politics in the US for the inauguration.

Nigel Farage and Pretty Patel, apparently also there, the sad scrapings from the rotting bottom of the British political barrel.

But it's interesting to see how British politicians are changing their tune on Trump.

David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, who previously has

described Donald Trump as a woman-hating neo-Nazi sociopath, this week described Trump as gracious and generous and very friendly, before going on to describe his pet Halibut Morris as a bone-dry quadruped with a sonorous singing voice and biceps you would kill for.

He said, Lami explained his change of approach saying, I have said the approach has got to be progressive realism.

And obviously, human history shows there's always a fine line between progressive realism and regressive delusionism.

And he added, you meet the world as it is, not as you would wish it to be.

And personally, I just prefer not to meet the world at all right now.

me and the world are on a break

i might start sleeping with other worlds um i i think um

i think that's interesting it sort of touches upon the thing that dave chappelle said on snl which is like they've voted for you now please just try and do your best

which is you know maybe an attitude that people are taking of like going well now how do we we can rage about this or how do we move forward and how do we protect the things that we think need protecting and the stuff that we hold dear, and hope

that

he might do some good with his presidency?

Yeah, I mean, why?

Yeah, like you're not buying it.

I'm not entirely buying it.

I guess

we can hope that.

Similarly, I hope that one day I will win an Olympic medal in synchronized diving.

We mustn't abandon hope, no matter how

unrealistic it seems at the time.

He's tapped up Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone, and John Voigt to be his ambassadors in Hollywood.

All the young dudes.

Yeah.

Is Joe McCarthy still dead?

Can they not just get in back to sort Hollywood out again?

Mel Gibson apparently is working on

the Passion of the Christ 2.

There's another sequel that's a patrony.

Yeah.

Subtitled

Zombie Jesus and the Donkey of Vengeance, which could be a sensational film.

One of the instant results of Donald Trump re-becoming president is that TikTok,

it's

long, aching ban from America, which lasted literally hours, is

back online, apparently.

I don't know.

Long term, whether

the ban will stand seems unlikely.

Tiff, you are our American social media correspondent.

Just bring us up to date with exactly what's going on.

Yeah, I mean, it's literally less than 24 hours since the morning uh

the american morning for tick tock um you know we'd only just had the eulogy i mean what could i say about this plucky chinese upstart that launched a thousand dancing healthcare workers and gave terrible contraceptive advice to millions of young women um it was beautiful actually to watch the funeral cortege of mourners dabbing And it was very touching to see celebrities such as Tom Brody and Jack Black recreate the wet-ass pussy dance as a drone display spelled out RIP cap cut in the sky.

That was a very emotional moment.

I choked up during that.

You know, at Jimmy Carter's funeral, the Secret Service accompanied him on his way to be sort of interned, I think.

And at the TikTok funeral, 10 influencers live streamed Get Ready With Me from Inside the Hearse.

So that was

a really nice moment.

I lip-synced the service on my TikTok because obviously we were still able to use it here.

So then I followed it up with a very long explainer about how none of us really work for ourselves when we're at the mercy of social media platforms and arbitrary algorithms.

Also, I don't know how to fix any of this, so please click to subscribe.

How do we fix it?

How do we fix it?

I mean, it feels now, now that

TikTok has had a reprieve, it feels very much like this was set up to kind of curry favor, I guess, that Trump, it makes him look very cool, doesn't it?

For all the TikTok, because I was literally seeing videos of people crying, going, I've lost my entire income.

You know, TikTok is my, this has given me a career.

It's how I do all of my stuff.

And it does frighten me as someone who's on, you know, I'm not sort of not really on Facebook as much, but is on all the other various platforms, like as a way to get audiences to the show.

And my job seems to be now as much as anything else is providing clip.

Need clip, want clip, want a clip, like one minute thirty of trying to cram an entire, you know, sixteen, seventeen year career of stand-up into one minute, thirty or ninety second bursts in order to beg people to come out and pay money to see you live.

It's totally fine.

It's totally fine.

It's why I got into this.

But yes, it does make me wonder

the ability to be able to sort of snatch that away.

But like I say, it does kind of all feel a bit set up now because isn't the founder of TikTok at the inauguration in the tech bro tranche so um so it feels like it's you know even the announcement was like thank you to the work of President Donald Trump.

We're back.

I mean, even Jesus stayed dead longer than TikTok.

Give it three days, guys.

I asked my kids how their friends were preparing for it and how they felt about it.

My kids aren't big TikTok users, but their friends are.

And they said that their classmates were installing RedNote, the Chinese version of TikTok, and literally learning Mandarin.

So

there's an upside.

Yeah, but Trump's going to say he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for getting billions of American children to learn Mandarin.

He'll take credit for that.

Let's stay in America now for an update on the Los Angeles fires and exactly who is to blame.

Now, obviously, NATO,

this is your home state.

All qualified and respected scientists know that the LA fires have been caused by Californian voters in November passing Proposition 3, a constitutional amendment that enshrined the right to same-sex marriage in the state constitution, thus bringing the vengeance of the Lord onto California.

Obviously, we assumed it'd be another earthquake, maybe a spontaneous volcano, maybe a plague of feral squirrels, maybe even a career-ending soup-drinking injury for LA Dodgers superstar Shohei Otani.

We knew the divine retribution would come.

We just weren't sure how,

but it's come obviously in the form of these fires.

But some people are looking around for other sources of blame for this.

Los Angeles has multiple major fires underway, and

it's a catastrophe.

Lots of people have been displaced.

Lots of people have lost homes, including actually members of my family.

People are rebuilding their lives.

But Trump is on the case, and he blames the smelt.

That is,

Trump has announced that the reason that there are fires is that Gavin Newsom is not sending Southern California enough water because he was saving the water to protect the habitat of the smelt, which is a small fish

that you might eat fried.

And it's surprising that Trump would wage war on the smelt because of how much he likes fried food.

I was going to say, because of the dealt.

Because normally the one who smelt it, dealt it.

But so Trump thinks it's the fish.

Generally, people think there's also been a whole line of argument

that it's

that the Los Angeles fire chief is a lesbian, the first lesbian fire chief.

And so that the reason for the fires is the wokeness.

So it's not climate change.

It's not systematic defunding of public services infrastructure or the decision to keep rebuilding communities in fire zones despite Malibu having burned down repeatedly over many years.

Nope, it's the lesbian fire chief and their calls for her resignation despite union support.

There was one analyst who said in the news that she wasn't, quote, ready for prime time,

which refers to the time in television with the most expected audience

for advertising purposes.

Also, obviously, the form of time that can only be divided by itself and the number one.

And so

she might not be ready for prime time, but we live in an age of streaming.

And so, who thinks about prime time anymore?

It's such a 90s question.

Really, the question is, is she bingeable?

And I think she is.

So

her name is the fire chief's name is Crowley.

And I want to just briefly recap her resume so we can determine if this was a failure of wokeness to let this unqualified lesbian run the fire department.

Bill Maher said, that was what Bill Maher said, is, was she the best candidate or was she the best lesbian candidate?

As though those two things were mutually exclusive.

So she was hired in 2022.

And

they were worried that

the implication in Maher's comment is that lesbians are less qualified, but come on, who knows more about moisture and friction than lesbians?

So

here's her background.

Crowley is a 22 veteran of the LA Fire Department.

This is according to the announcement

when they appointed her fire chief.

Chief Crowley has proven her credibility and character by promoting through the ranks.

She served as a firefighter, paramedic, engineer, fire inspector, captain one, captain two, battalion chief, assistant chief, deputy chief, chief deputy, and fire chief.

Now, the part of this that I'm personally most upset about is learning the hard way that in the LA Fire Department, deputy chief and chief deputy are different jobs.

She also served nine years as a battalion commander.

That sounds like a lot to me.

That sounds like someone who's highly qualified for the position objectively.

But to be fair, what do I know?

I'm not qualified to evaluate the qualifications of someone to be a fire chief.

So,

NATO, NATO, how can you be a fire chief and not like the hoes?

Heyo,

I would argue the DEI is not selecting a 20-year fire department veteran to be a chief, a fire chief who also happens to be a lesbian.

DEI is allowing random white men on the internet whose entire knowledge of firefighting comes from watching backdraft to weigh in on the qualifications of the fire department.

That's DEI for you.

Also, I wonder if she's related to Alistair Crowley.

In which case, she would know about hellfire and how to deal with it.

It's bizarre, isn't it?

That as soon as the sort of fires happened,

there was an instant sort of influx of wellness influencers who

have a dance as old as time itself.

Yeah,

like in the wake of the fire, selling tinctures, supplements,

essential oils for smoke inhalation.

And as we all know, like oil is an accelerant for fire.

Maybe they hope to calm that with the raw milk they were also offering up.

I just want to know if they're doing this for fires, what are they going to do for us and army?

You know, rebalance all that salty water you'll be swallowing as you fight for your life with my personal wellness sugar pills with real aspartamine, only 30% carcinogenic, 50% of the time, or maybe for a hurricane.

In the light of this force 10 gale raging through the south coast, I'm offering a 15% discount on my lead-lined sneakers, which will prevent you from being lifted into the eye of the storm.

No wicked witch of the west on my watch.

Just use the code twister fifteen when you check out.

I mean, it does show, I mean, once again, the term John Oliver used on the bugle many years ago, catastrophe,

the opportunity to profit from disaster.

Look at the state of the environment in the global economy, exploiting the victims of natural disasters might be one of the few growth industries over coming decades, along with green tech companies that can turn hypocrisy into electricity, makers of padded headbands, there's going to be a huge increase in people slamming their heads onto their tables in frustration at the state of the planet.

And of course, test cricket statistics.

Please, if I say it, it'll come true.

But we in the Bugle are not afraid to jump on these bandwagons.

We can offer you a number of Bugle-branded and endorsed wellness products, including fossil juice, water that has been soaked around a fossil.

That's 40 million years of nutritional goodness in one mouthful.

Horse Echoes, which is the sound of a horse gently whinnying on a summer's day, captured in a special tin.

When you uncak the tin, you subliminally catch the sound of the horse, boosting your sense of oneness with nature by up to 290%.

We also offer de-charcoal charcoal-infused charcoal, just to make sure, and tree ovum fallopiettes, which are highly beneficial secretions from a mummy tree, ethically sourced from sustainable lady orchards, which can make you recover up to 12 times as quickly from a disappointing snooze.

So, all available via the Bugle website.

Ceasefire news now, and

well so far as we record the ceasefire is holding

that's I think now more than eight minutes.

My optimismometer is flickering above the 0.01%

which may be naive of me.

I mean the fact that it even got this far I guess is

positive.

Benjamin Netanyahu had accused Hamas of reneging on the deal before the deal even even began but some hostages have have been released under a rather complicated scheme that over the next six weeks will will hopefully not see further atrocities and tragedies.

NATO

am I right to have a few flickerings of partial hope?

Look, I'm a huge fan of peace, harmony, global stability, human happiness and shit like that.

And I know being a fan of that kind of stuff is like supporting a really bad sports team, which you mentioned earlier on.

You know realistically you're never going to win at the highest level, but you still support it because you love it, you grew up with it, your parents got you into it, no matter how logically you accept that it's going to bring you more disappointment than joy, joy, you just can't change sides and start supporting war, misery, and division.

So, um,

uh, what's happening?

You also are wearing all the uniform and the kit

because I mean, history, that endless source of grumpery and disappointment that it is, suggests that after deals like this, the words and they all lived happily ever after, don't always follow immediately.

So, how are you seeing it right now?

First of all, like, obviously, this, the way what happened happened

is that, I mean, there were all these reports over the last several months that Trump was communicating directly with Netanyahu.

And so Trump and Netanyahu clearly worked out an agreement to hold out on the ceasefire until after Trump won, knowing that this issue was a huge liability for Biden and getting reelected.

And so

Netanyahu got what he wanted, which is to be a f ⁇ ing bastard

for a few months longer.

And Trump wanted to find out whether Israel could do anything that would be an actual red line for Biden.

And

there was not.

Biden would rather let Trump blow up the entire world than withhold a single tank shell.

It was all these calls on Biden to cut off military aid to Israel

that was presented in the name of Israel defending itself.

And I looked, I was curious to see what was the actual military aid that was being supplied.

And it was air-to-air missiles missiles because everyone knows that Hamas has a lot of top gun red baron fighter aces

that need to be taken down so Netanyahu immediately said quote if we must return to fighting we will do it in new forceful ways

as opposed to the unforceful ways that they've been doing over the last year and a half

I don't what the new ways of fighting it feels like they've really covered the ways

They've been pretty exhaustive.

Like, roast battle, styrofoam swords, what are we talking about?

Please not a roast battle.

Please not a roast battle.

That is the lowest form of civilization.

The ceasefire began Sunday, and immediately Israel killed 23 people

in Gaza.

So it's a ceasefire in the same way that I'm doing dry January,

which is that it's January 20th, and I've had seven drinks.

So it's technically not dry, just more dry than the month before, which is not saying much.

And I feel like I'm making a sacrifice and deprived of something that makes me happy, even though it's objectively good for me to do it.

I thought dry January meant no lube.

Just raw dogging it.

The release sausages were also given goodie bags, apparently, I was reading, including gifts and souvenirs and certificates commemorating their time in captivity, photographs of their time, and a map of

Gaza, which I I think might be the weirdest thing that has happened in human history.

But genuinely, I thought you were making that up.

No, no, no,

it was genuinely on a news site.

Apparently, they were given essentially goodie bags like you get when you leave a children's party as a child.

Maybe like fluids, an IV drip, a check for

Hamas is doing better at merch than the bugle.

Oh dear, that is a low bar.

That is a very bad.

I would like to say I'm very grateful for my bugle mug that I received in the post.

Netanyahu

said that he'd sort of changed the face of the Middle East.

That's what he claimed to have.

And I guess he has in the way that the bride of Wildenstein changed their face, you know, by taking something that was recognisable as a face and then completely destroying it.

Yeah.

I mean, disappointingly, neither Netanyahu nor Hamas have announced their resignations.

Neither has issued a statement saying we acknowledge that the time is now right to step aside and allow someone who actually wants the best for the people they purport to represent to have a crack at leadership.

But I guess we can't expect everything at once, nor has the UN announced that, in addition to a ceasefire, a cease history has been launched where no one is allowed to know anything that has ever happened in the past in the region.

And without that, it's hard to see a long-term peace evolving.

But we will keep you fully up to date with how it all goes over the next six to ten thousand years.

uk news now and um the founder of the brew dog um brewing company has uh described the united kingdom as the least work-oriented country in the world and disappointingly yeah this was not meant as a compliment uh if i if i said that about britain you would know that is me admiring the work-life balance that we've achieved well or we haven't achieved but you know if i described a country as the least work-oriented i would mean it in a good way.

He did not mean it in a good way, he means that he wants more people to work their asses off so that entrepreneurs can cream off the profits of their labor.

Tiff,

I know you've been investigating this for us.

Yeah, I mean, as it's in Scotland, we do obviously need to have someone to explain it properly.

So, for this item, we do have Scottish boyfriend explains a heng work-life balance.

Here's the heng, right?

So, former brew dog, CEO, and current Belle End James Watt got into bother for suggesting in a video on social media that the idea of a work-life balance was invented by people who hate what they do.

Then, when he got pilted for it, he doubled down by saying it was because of a low work ethic in the UK.

Aye, very good, pal.

It's easy to have a high work ethic when you're getting paid millions.

It's no great surprise that James Isney worried about having to balance work and life because when he was at work he was supposedly spending a lot of his time

burving over female bar staff and generally making them uncomfortable under a culture of fear which I assume he probably does in his free time as well.

An attack on the very idea of work-life balance suggests that James Watt would prefer imbalance.

He'd prefer that workers give up the idea of free time and

give all to their job where bosses refuse to pay a living living wage for new workers in the midst of a cost of living crisis.

And he can put profit over people, and he and his new fiancée, the aptly named Georgia Toffalo or Toftoft, who are pals, can elope and get married in the Maldives.

Watt eventually took the video down saying, There's only so many times you can be called a gay Scotch egg-headed f in one day.

And I have to say, I agree with him.

Well, partially, because I don't agree with gay slurs as an insult for one, and the same goes for the Folickly Challenge.

And obviously I don't think Scottish is an insult, especially for someone whose accent is even less believable than mine.

It was just a bit of a slam there on my husband, okay?

But I do agree wholeheartedly and unreservedly that that man is a f ⁇ .

I mean, it is a bit weird, isn't it?

If you're criticising a country for not being focused enough on work,

stop giving them so much beer.

But But surely that's quite obvious, isn't it?

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's Bugle.

We will have world-exclusive coverage of the next four years of American history and,

as I said, the 10,000 years of the Middle East peace process.

Anything to plug, Tiff?

Oh, yes, I have some tour shows coming up.

I'm going to be in Liverpool on the 6th of March,

London on the 18th of March, I think, think, and Brighton on the 16th of March.

More dates are being added.

If you want to find out all about it, go check my website, which hasn't been updated since Brexit.

Actually, don't check that.

Go on to one of the social media platforms where I have no control, but there's a link tree on there.

You can find dates and everything else.

And also,

I believe, I think I'm on House of Games week starting the 10th of February.

So if you want to catch me on TV, tune in for that.

Natope, February 1st, I'll be at

the setup comedy.

And February 9th, the Cheaper Than Therapy.

Mr.

Nato Green on Instagram.

I'm making the move, NATO Green on Blue Sky.

You can find me there increasingly trying not to be threatened with death.

It's good to have a goal in life, isn't it?

My tour continues.

Details at Andysolson.co.uk.

The news quiz is back on radio forward.

You can catch that via the BBC Sounds website.

And also, don't forget that A Passion for Passion, the publishing phenomenon of the third millennium so far, by written co-written by Alice Fraser and the legendary Dancy Lagarde, will be on sale from the 6th of February.

And you can buy copies via the Bugle website, thebuglepodcast.com, where you can also join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme to help keep this show free, flourishing, independent, and devoid of advertisements telling you to buy soft furnishings or anything else.

Until next week, goodbye.

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.