Netherlands? More like Nether happened!

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4317 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual, but it must also be emphasized, idiotic world.

I'm Andy Zaltzmann, coming to you not live, from here in the Shed of Immutable Truth in South London.

And I'm delighted to be joined this week.

Firstly, joining us from India, it's Anuvab Pal.

Anuvab, welcome, welcome back to Mugal.

How are you?

Hello, Andy.

Hi, Tiff.

How are you both?

Hi.

Oh, well, they've just introduced our other guest there, who's just building up the tension.

We've just gone straight in.

Tiff Steel is also joining us this week.

Did you just steal my shine there, Anub?

I'm just doing the whole medium, the entire

medium how's things in mumbai well and you know um i just got back from darjeeling i was in a gig in darjeeling and i was stranded till last night uh monsoon rain sub-imalayan terrain and a road collapsed in a landslide um and this was 2024 and i started wondering how did the british ever get up there in 1890

How badly did they need tea that they were willing to risk a mountain range falling on their head to get the right brew?

Well, that's just the way we will do anything for a good cup of tea.

Tiff, how are you?

I'm good.

I'm good.

I've got a little bit of a cold today, so my cure for that, of course, a steaming mug of tea.

A steaming mug of tea.

It's a curable to everything.

That's right.

That's why it's worth clambering up every available mountain in Asia to get a hold of it.

We are recording on the 30th of September 2024.

On this day, in 331 BC, can you believe it's that long ago?

Alexander the Great defeated King Darius III of Persia in the Battle of Gorgomila in modern-day Iraqi Kurdistan.

Disappointing result for KD3, as he was known, at the hands of ATG.

Transcripts from the post-battle press conference show Darius admitting to being, quotes, gutted and saying, fair play to Al.

He's a terrific strategist and he's done us over right good and proper with his light infantry, to be fair.

Darius defiantly refused to quit as Emperor of Persia, despite a second successive loss to the Macedonian ace, but insisted he was still the right man for the job and would think about how best to bounce back from defeat whilst fleeing for his life.

And then he fled for his life.

That was 30th of September, all the way back in 331 BC.

And, well, this is 100 years anniversary since the 31st of September, 1924.

The only recorded instance of the 31st of September happening after an administrative error in the League of Nations calendar department led to the UN precursor organization posting the day's date as the 31st of September, causing mayhem in global financial markets, triggering the famous Wednesday wobble on the New York Stock Exchange that caused stocks to lose 98% of their value in a day before rebounding back the following morning when the calendar was corrected to the 1st of October.

So let that be a lesson to you.

Obviously, that didn't happen.

But it could have happened.

And the fact that none of you interrupted me to say, Andy, that's bullshit, suggests, you know

that we've learned nothing as a species just just because a man is saying something authoritatively into a microphone doesn't mean he should be believed fact check fact check fact check

we should be doing this in the american debates i'm not coming in quick enough for my fact checking

to us if you start fact checking the bugle that's uh that is a a portal into the gates of confusion that you will never be able to close the stock market collapsing 98 on a made-up day sounds perfectly legitimate.

As always,

a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin.

This week, we have life hacks from the animal world.

We like to think of ourselves as the most successful species on the planet, but are we really living life the most efficient way?

We look in our section of the bin this week at potential life hacks from the animal world that might help us humans including don't sleep in six to eight hour chunks every day save for one three or four month hibernation every year.

Then work hard, play harder for the remaining eight or nine months.

And also never forget, never remember.

The life of a goldfish is generally one that is unencumbered by historical fury, personal resentment, or the kind of things that hold us back as a species.

So essentially,

I think those are two things that would

definitely make us function better as a species.

Any other suggestions that things from the animal world that you think would help us out on a personal level?

Storing nuts.

Right.

Like squirrels do.

Just maybe keeping bits of food that you might have later just in the pouches

of your cheek.

Okay.

Like a little food snus.

That could work.

I was just reading octopuses, octopi.

They hunt with fish and fish are like the henchmen.

They go in there and sort of dig out stuff and then the prey come out and then the octopuses.

I'd quite like some henchmen, you know, like when I step out, just having a group of people, just having the initial conversations, and then I go and have a conversation.

Well, maybe, I mean, would they, you know, a fish or an octopus could

do that?

I mean, particularly in monsoon season, Anuvab would be quite an effective way of doing things.

I have an affinity with the turkey vulture because it vomits as a form of self-defense, and I am prone to a bit of that.

Right, I think

we could encompass that more into our dailies.

Quite like the kangaroo pouch.

That's a good one as well.

Just to carry stuff.

I've got one of those, Anivab.

Any more description needed?

No?

I mean, that's what I call it.

That's my nickname.

Top story this week.

Well, since things on Earth are not going terrifically well broadly or specifically, we thought we'd look to the skies for our top story this week.

And this thrilling news that Earth, our famous planet, is set to get a new moon.

Yes, we've been waiting for this for so long.

A second moon is coming our way.

If you're one of those people who thought that we really aren't getting the best out of our one solitary moon, that other planets with more moons have it better, even if Saturn's alleged 146 moon tally is frankly unnecessary and preposterous.

Who needs that many moons?

I bet Saturn can't even remember half of their names.

But anyway, it seems ridiculous that we on Earth, which lest we forget is the best known and most popular planet in the entire solar system and as far as we know the universe, we just poodle along with one paltry f ⁇ ing moon.

It's a big one.

It's an influential one, but it's still only one.

So the good news is we're about to be treated to a free new complementary trial second moon.

A small asteroid has just joined Earth on a short-term deal for about two months from this weekend just past.

It's going to orbit the crap out of the Earth for a few weeks and then is scheduled to escape from the Earth's gravity in late November and toddle back off into space in search of its next moon gig.

But I guess if this trial is successful, we could be looking at

a permanent second moon, hopefully bigger, because this one

is quite small.

I mean, I imagine both of you as massive fans of

moons in general must be very excited by this news.

I'm pumped, andy i well actually i say that we went out the other night and it was a full moon uh

the old uh scottish husband and i and he looked at the moon and then when we turned around the corner the moon had got smaller like it was shy and i cannot believe he male gazed the moon

it got smaller He objectified the moon and it got smaller.

He's like, oh, look how big and shiny it is.

And the moon got embarrassed and shrunk.

And that is something that my husband did.

So I I feel ashamed, and the patriarchy has struck again.

Well, that's the thing with a patriarchy.

You might think it's down, but it always bounces back.

Look, it's about time.

It is about time.

Like you said, Andy, current moon, same boring nonsense, right?

New moon opens up a whole world to new culture.

For example, a possible Pink Floyd reunification project, the dark side of this new moon, possible apple,

a retelling of the 1979 Roger Moore James Bond classic Moonraker Part Du.

I think we'd all be in favour of that.

I mean, if you're expecting something along the lines of our world-renowned existing moon, you might be disappointed.

You won't be able to see it because it's only 10 meters long, although your pet wolf, if you have one, will probably be inclined to howl at it if it's using a professional quality telescope.

So do bear that in mind.

It's about 10 meters long, which actually makes it closer in size to a bench or a bread roll than what we generally think of as moons.

But if the headline says we're getting a second moon, then I'm all in.

I just want,

I think this planet needs to change.

And, you know, this is a gratuitous piece of change.

And I think it might just help us.

I mean, admittedly, out of all the second things that we've been waiting for.

Moon probably wasn't top of the list, you know, second chance, second opinion, second coming, second place Rosette after dropping below Neptune in the top planet for quality of life in the solar system rankings.

You know, all those, good.

But, you know, maybe sometimes the unexpected turns out to be what you most need.

And

I think, you know, a second moon could do us a lot of good.

Apparently, there's been loads of mini-moons that have been spotted, but they're

like, there's been a couple that have been spotted, but there's loads that have gone unnoticed.

And that's definitely true because my friend Lisa's Hendu, I definitely did a mini-moon at that.

That wasn't recorded and I didn't get the credit for it.

But I felt the effects of a second moon.

I felt

the effects of it since August, actually, because I had two periods that month.

Either that or it was a very stressful fringe.

Also, at one point, there was a tide in my bath, and I think that was mini-moon.

Oh, right.

Okay.

Good well, boy.

Look, I've just been thinking: if you are a person with a pet wolf that has its own telescope, you deserve to see the second moon.

What I'm interested to know is that there's, according to this report, there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of objects out there that we haven't discovered.

They said this highlights the importance of us being able to continually monitor the night sky and find all of these objects.

So it's good to know one day there can be a steptoe and sun in space.

And I will probably be related to them in some way because my great-grandfather was Romani and he was a recycling pioneer.

He used to make windmills and jam jars and sell them.

So somewhere I want to run a sort of intergalactic brick-a-brac shop, maybe on the mini-moon.

What do you do with those?

Are you supposed to spread them on toast like a regular jam or

a bit crunchy, wouldn't I?

Well, the windmills, the windmills and jam jars.

And some breaking news also reaching us.

The USA, China, Russia, and India have all announced plans to put a human being on the mini moon by mid-afternoon tomorrow at a combined cost of $8.5 quadrillion.

I have a feeling ours will probably be the cheapest one because he's probably trying to go up there in a jam jar with a windmill.

Back on Earth news now.

And,

well, the latest from the Middle East, I think, can be summarized in two words.

Oh, dear.

You could have gone with another.

word after the o, but definitely started with O and then something four letters long.

I'm starting to think that

things aren't going to be all fixed by Christmas as I was hoping both last year and this year and for every year since, I don't know, 6000 BC or so.

And my main concern now is for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres,

because I think he will soon be suffering from repetitive strain injury from frowning.

and possibly weeping and it's possible that his entire face will just be fixed in a perma frown and that he will never be able to express any emotion again facially other than despair and disgust at what the world is becoming.

And I'm very concerned about this.

He issued a tweet.

He put out a tweet last week.

And this might be the saddest tweet he's put out, I think.

A united Security Council can make a tremendous difference for peace.

And I mean, that might be factually correct, but it's also...

One of the things that is least likely to happen on this planet.

Bearing in mind that the members of the Security Council are the the USA, France, and the UK, and China, and

Russia.

And achieving unity amongst those five, let alone the other 10 non-permanent members, that is now looking about as likely as Elvis Presley winning the 2028 US presidential election.

It's not completely out of the question,

but it is a long shot, and a lot of questions will be asked if it does suddenly happen.

Russia, in particular, does not seem particularly unity-inclined

at the moment.

Have either of you got any shreds of optimism to throw into this casserole of gloom?

Well, I don't know.

The UN nowadays reminds me a little bit of the Roman Emperor Nero and he.

Like him, no one told them when the people are up for a violin concert and when they need to read the room and not play the violin because people are otherwise busy.

I think they get together, they say a lot of things.

And I've learned a thing from millennials.

It's called a word salad, but it's found a lot of words that are said.

It's quite healthy as well.

It's one of the healthiest ways of consuming words.

I often wonder that if you've got word salad on one side and bunker buster bombs on the other, I feel like the latter might be a little more effective.

I mean, there's that famous saying, isn't it?

The pen is mightier than the sword.

And the only problem with that is that it's completely and utterly untrue.

And uh

and also the pen is definitely not mightier than the nuclear bomb for example uh or various other forms of military hardware but it's a charming idea to cling to however naive

politico referred to the un's relevance problem like it's a female pop star attempting to come back

what the last kind of big thing they were doing was to to propose this 21-day ceasefire Yeah.

And that everyone had come together to propose that.

And then it's just been treated as a serving suggestion, I guess?

Personally, I mean, I'm not really in favor of a 21-day ceasefire.

I'd much rather have a 21-millennium ceasefire, which I think will be just enough time to let everything and everyone calm down.

And at the end of which people might have forgotten what they were fighting about, but that might still be on the

conservative side.

I mean, maybe this idea of unity in the UN Security Council.

It's like the start of an American sports movie where a team of people who don't get on at all, can't play well together.

They gradually bond and they end up winning a trophy and everyone getting very excited.

And you know, by this time next year, we'll have Keir Starmer, whoever's running France by then, Carmela Harris, please, Xi Jinping, and Vladi Poodles.

They'll be singing Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong at a special Eternal Peace

concert in Beirut.

We just don't know at this stage.

They'll definitely be serving sausages.

Well, yeah, so this was the

big highlight from last week was when Keir Starmer brought some much needed levity into the Middle East issue by accidentally saying, we should assume accidentally, actually.

I say that, I mean, it's possible.

He said sausages instead of hostages.

And people rather rashly assumed

that

it was a slip of the tongue.

I mean, do you think it definitely was, Tiff, or do you think actually?

I don't know.

Maybe he was doing

who's the guy that does all the spoofy songs?

You know, like Eat It and Weirdal Yankovic.

Weirdow.

Maybe he was weirding the speech.

I'm just going to swap words in.

Or maybe, maybe we've got it all wrong.

Maybe this whole time, dogs have been asking for hostages and not sausages.

Keep taking them to the butchers and they're like, why are you bringing me here?

I said I want hostages.

They should definitely return the hostages.

But if Hamas did take some sausages, they should return that as well.

Honestly, you know, I think they should give back both those things that they've taken.

I would agree with that.

Also, I mean, it's possible that Kier Starmer's just trying to enter himself into the pantheon of great misspoken words and famous speeches.

Because we generally only remember the retakes when people make a mistake

and not the original version with the mistakes.

Starmer's mistake was that it was broadcast live, so

he couldn't re-record it with hostages instead of sausages.

But, you know, for example, John F.

Kennedy, his first effort was Ichbin ein Burley Nerd,

because, you know,

loved rugby and he loved stats.

Robert Oppenheimer, now I am becomes death, destroyer of curls, death for straight hair without the faff.

This is

Margaret Thatcher's, there's no such thing as sobriety.

And Mao Situng, political power, grows out of the apparel of a nun, who misses.

And

of course, FDR's, the only thing we have to fear is Ferret's health.

Someone had mistyped his auto-cue.

And of course, Patrick Henry, the American revolutionary in 1775.

Give me liberty or give me free clothes and tickets to an Arsenal game.

Well, that was, and maybe that was Kier Starmer as well.

We forget.

What we do know is if there were sausages, they definitely weren't pork.

Yeah.

I mean, that probably would

have helped the...

Maybe that would help the city.

I don't know.

Maybe that's something that can bring people together.

I am starting to worry that Guterres is really not getting a lot of job satisfaction, which is very important in the modern workplace, you know, in the 2020s.

You want to be able to get into your job and

feel happy and content.

And I just don't think, you know, he himself admitted that the UN cannot mediate in conflicts where the parties are not themselves seeking mediation.

So you can understand why he's so gloomy.

And it is hard to be half.

I still personally like to think the glass is half full, albeit that is half full of the shattered remnants of what used to be the top half of the glass.

So that's the way I see the situation.

Look, also,

I don't know, there's been too much pressure on America to always mediate things, right?

You're a big sports fan.

I would imagine, what if there was someone completely from the left field who comes in and mediates and solves this and takes care of the shit?

You know, like Gabon steps up.

And

suddenly you hear an announcement that

Djibouti has stepped up and taken care of the whole thing, got everyone to sit down, and everyone's gone home.

You know, like, I feel like other players need to step up now.

Yes.

Well, it does seem that whatever we're doing at the moment

isn't really working.

And I mean, it's possible, even rather than having countries, you should just get randomly selected people or even sports teams from around the world should be someone to write, okay, this week, you are going to sort out the

Middle East crisis.

The Jacksonville Jaguars, you're going to take a week off, your troubled start of the NFL season, and you're just going to go out, you're going to sort the Middle East, the Middle East out.

I think, I mean, like that kind of Paris Saint-Germain could just go, and instead of

playing overplayed football, they could, you know, just, I don't know, haven't thought through the logistics.

I think Man City, send them in to sort out the Ukraine.

It's about time we started using sports washing

for

the purposes of good and human progress.

I mean, for example, like you said, if the Saudis are going to own the second moon, there's definitely going to be a golf tournament on there.

UK news now and well, news has broken.

And when I say news has broken, news has been created that Boris Johnson, who created this piece of news, considered invading the Netherlands, if I may overstate things in a manner befitting a story about Boris Johnson making up some news.

In a new memoir entitled Unleashed, Boris Johnson has claimed that he considered

a raid by sea on a Dutch warehouse to seize COVID vaccines during the pandemic.

Obviously, it's a fun story, particularly for those people who like to look back fondly on the time when we had a certifiable clown as prime minister.

And obviously, this is Boris Johnson.

He might have said that he was thinking of invading the Netherlands, but we know he would not have invaded the Netherlands because it would have been difficult.

And that wasn't really his MO.

But anyway, the Deputy Chief of the Defense Staff, Lieutenant General General Chalmers, pointed out that there was only one potential problem with the plan, which would have involved apparently rigid inflatable boats scuttling down Dutch canals at the dead of night to seize vaccines from a warehouse, had it happened, which obviously could never have happened.

The only problem was that the UK would have had to explain why we were effectively invading a long-standing NATO ally.

Therefore, this

otherwise apparently flawless plan to steal vaccines from a Dutch warehouse using inflatable dinghies.

But that

obviously just couldn't go ahead.

I mean,

Tiff, I know you've been waiting for Boris Johnson's memoir to be published as

the book that you've been waiting for all your life, really.

What did you make of this story?

Calling it unleashed sounds like it's going to have a tie-in fragrance, which would probably be a fart if it was Boris Johnson.

I feel like, also, that suggests at some point in time, Boris was actually leashed, like trained for walkies and punished for hiding in fridges.

Boris said, We considered aquatic raid.

That's what was described as aquatic, already it's gone into bond territory immediately.

Aquatic raid on Netherlands to seize COVID vaccine.

And I just sort of thought about this.

I was like, of course, because any chance Bozza can have to make himself wish.com Churchill, he will take it.

So when

Lieutenant General Doug Chalmers told the Prime Minister it was possible, the plan was certainly feasible and would involve using rigid inflatable boats.

You know, he was there going, we will fight them on the beaches.

That's just an excuse to get that line out.

And then it's, it's, it's, it's, um,

it's at, it, well, it's not baffling.

It's like you say, it's not real news, is it?

It's like, what does the book cover?

Well, it covers, uh, it covers this plot, uh, Ocean's 11, or, you know, in this kind of version, ocean.

There doesn't need to be 10 or 11.

11.

There just needs to be one.

It just needs to be Boris.

But the other parts of the book have him denying eating cake again.

This is what we can expect from this exciting tome, this hotly anticipated tome.

Denying eating cake as what he described as the feeblest event in the history of human festivity, which was his 56th birthday during lockdown.

I saw no cake.

I ate no blooming cake.

If this was a party, it was the feeblest event ever.

I'd only just got over COVID.

I did not sing.

I did not dance.

So those appear to be the criteria for a party.

Whoever the party is in honor of, they must sing or dance.

Otherwise, it is not a party.

So how many parties have you been to, Andy, that have not been parties?

Because I've never seen you sing or dance.

No, no, I don't think.

Yeah.

It means I've never been to a party, I think.

I've never held a party.

Yeah.

I mean, you were at my wedding reception.

Maybe you sang.

Maybe you danced.

I did neither of those things, Tiff.

No, no.

So was it even a party, Andy?

Definitely not.

Ash's 2005, Andy, I think, ended up

in a late-night karaoke bar dancing with 15,000 men.

I have never, in my almost 50 years on this planet, I have never done karaoke.

And I consider that half a century well spent.

But then I'm a miserable f ⁇ er.

So, you know, you've got to balance that factor in as well.

we give boris johnson a lot of criticism for you know failing to be the churchill he always dreamed of being but in many ways he got halfway there because churchill famously said i have nothing to offer but blood toil tears and sweat and boris johnson has got as far as i have nothing to offer so it's a start

it's a start

it's another piece of moppaganda

That's what I call it when Boris spouts a bit of nonsense because he does it while messing up the hair.

I haven't read the book, but I just want to know, Andy Tiff, do you think there's stuff in there where Boris Johnson takes credit for great moments of British history where in some inexplicable way he was present?

Like in Normandy, for example.

Yeah,

I would hope so.

I would hope he's claiming that he was the genius behind most of his embodied Kingdom Brunel's best works and

probably wrote

half of Shakespeare's, well, all of Shakespeare's history plays, given that they're absolutely full of bullshit.

That would stack up, I think.

Battle of Hastings?

Yeah.

Probably his great-great-great-great-great-great-great.

He probably came up with the word ashes after his third breakup because the

rivalry needed a title.

Bugle crime section now, and it's been a while since we had a crime section in the audio newspaper.

I can't remember,

can you remember if you've done a crime section before?

I mean, we just talked about Boris Johnson.

So

this is our first crime section for half a minute here on the Bugle.

Very exciting news, this.

It's been claimed that artificial intelligence could solve cold cases.

A chair of the National Police Chiefs Council

claimed that historic crimes could be solved.

This technology, I mean, I should before we do this, I should emphasize that no Bugle co-host has been involved in any historic crimes.

Anuvab, for example, was not responsible for a series of bank robberies in 1920s, Michigan.

Tiff Stevenson did not assassinate the king of Ruritania in the 1840s.

And none of our other co-hosts have done things like that either.

But apparently this AI detective work can rifle through evidence at such a rate that it can process in just 30 hours

the amount of evidence that would take a single human detective 81 years

to get through, which I think means that if we stick with human cops and each case takes 81 years, no crimes would ever be solved before those cops died, which might explain why things take so long to get through the court.

I might have misunderstood that.

But anyway, but 30 years to do 81 years worth of work, it's so high-powered that it could even fill in the necessary paperwork associated with 81 years worth of human police detection in just 412 years.

The breakthrough has raised hopes that, even more excitingly than Writing the Failures of Justice, this same technology could produce up to 2,700 true crime podcasts per second, which could make it the most significant technological advance in human history.

Tiff, I know that

you're a huge fan of AI taking over every aspect of human life.

This must be particularly exciting.

It can simultaneously examine information from multiple sources, including videos, social media, emails, and hard drives.

And then the chairman of the National Police Chiefs' Council, Gavin Stevens, even suggested it could be used to crack previously unsolved cases like Jack the Ripper.

Yes, it's going to go on JTR's Facebook page and trawl his posts.

The lethal apron has checked into the 10 bells in Whitechapel.

What's on your mind feeling stabby today?

You know, Facebook memory pops up and it says, share this spree from 1890 with a couple of laughing emojis and one of a scalpel.

Like,

we don't need cold cases.

We don't need AI on cold cases.

We have internet detectives for that.

We have obsessed middle-aged women.

Get out of our way.

We're busy doing that.

This is technology coming for our jobs once again.

How am I going to spend my afternoons if it cannot be going through the internet, opening up cold cases, true crime?

I mean, come on.

Do you want to take all my fun away?

Also, it's being trialed by the British and Avon Police, so you can't not think of hot fuzz the entire time.

You know, are we actually going to investigate this?

Are we going to get Metal Mickey on it then?

We're just going to have a jam.

Jam scone.

Jam.

We're just going to have a jam.

We're just going to have a scone.

I was going to say jam first.

We're not terrorists.

Anyway, the robot's going to look at Vlad the Impaler's Instagram reels later on, so we don't have to do nothing.

I don't know if this is completely fair, because, for example, if they figured out, you know, was Tutankhamun murdered and who is William Shakespeare, then both Sky History and BBC4 would have to shut down because

they only exist for those reasons.

Yeah.

I mean, personally, I've long advocated computerizing the entire justice system.

You just put all the evidence into a computer, you set the tolerance according to the proximity of an election from vaguely sensible to lock them all up up and throw away the key.

And then you have an instant jail that can recreate a 12-year stretch in HMP Snutterbridge in a harrowingly brutal half hour in something that's a cross between a cement mixer, a roller coaster, a tumble dryer, and a 1950s boarding school.

And basically, you get the entire judicial process done in an afternoon.

I can't see any drawbacks with that.

I think you just described India's legal system there, Andrew.

Summary there.

Very good.

In other crime news, New York Mayor Eric Adams is facing federal charges, including bribery, wire fraud, and conspiracy.

And news is actually now reaching us that Carmela Harris has just stepped aside to allow Eric Adams to run as the Democratic candidate for president.

At last, the Democratic spokesperson says we have someone who can properly take on Donald Trump.

And this is hugely

exciting news that finally American politics gets what logically it is headed for, which is

two criminals up against each other.

For legal purposes, I should say that Eric Adams is not yet a criminal.

I'll tell you who you need to leave it to investigate as to whether or not that is true.

Middle-aged women on the internet.

Thank you.

So he's...

being investigated for getting thousands of dollars worth of gifts from Turkish investors, right?

And I'm sure you guys have talked about this on the bugle.

Recently, your prime minister got thousands of pounds of clothes as presents.

Now, this is just the Indian perspective here.

Where is the crime here exactly?

Because

in our politics, we would just refer to this as Tuesday.

I'll give you an example of a local Mumbai politician.

A local Mumbai politician,

a city MLA, he got convicted for a bribe.

Basically, he spent the money building a high-rise building.

He lives in it.

The guy that

gave him the bribe lives on the floor below.

And the guy prosecuting them lives above.

So everybody happy.

You know, I think there's clear ways to think.

Do they call that a corruption sandwich?

Here's the weird thing.

There's a lot of talk about the Indian Prime Minister being not corrupt.

I mean, famously, there are loads of articles about how he's cleaning up the system.

And that's why there's a strong argument going around India that the Prime Minister Modi may be foreign because not taking bribes is not in our DNA.

Till an

editorial recently said that maybe someone's giving him a bribe to not take a bribe.

And finally, on this week's Bugle, our tech and entertainment section.

Technology continues to drive humanity simultaneously forwards, backwards, sideways, and wildly, often on track, all at the same time.

Tiff, there's been a suggestion that

tech could provide a solution to government inefficiency.

The CEO of JP Morgan Chase has backed Elon Musk's proposal to create a Department of Government efficiency.

I mean, politics prides itself on being as inefficient and counterproductive as possible.

Is this really something that's going to catch the imagination of

our legislators?

Well, Musk is already expecting Trump to win, and he floated the idea

that he would work in

Donald Trump's government as part of a new commission if the election were to go his way in November.

But the efficiency department, I can already see it as a sitcom.

Elon playing a David Brent-esque character who embarrasses everyone with his shocking dancing first day on the job.

The first episode revolves around a meeting to see how the department can be more efficient, and it takes six hours.

And then Jamie Dimmon puts some poor civil servant stapler in jelly, and someone starts a game of football, sorry, soccer, in the printing room, and it all kicks off.

You know, I'm excited.

I might pitch it to

maybe, you know, or maybe even Armando Ianuchi.

We'll get a Veep version of this.

I don't see that happening.

We can see him if we can get him on the bugle to talk about it

if you're listening on Mando to come on anytime in other tech news it's turned that misinformation on tick tock Tiff has been turning women away from using the contraceptive pill so I mean I've long thought that the internet is essentially replacing organized religion that I mean it essentially fulfills the same role as God that it it knows everything about every aspect of your life

and it's massively judgmental towards women.

I mean, it's it's an uncanny resemblance.

And clearly, this is, you know, this is another manifestation of that.

The internet basically taken over the role that was traditionally performed by the world's great religions.

Well, yeah, I think we need a morning after pill for the internet itself.

One that

gets rid of the seed of every bad idea that's been planted in your brain.

I think going outside and going for a walk is probably

the real-life version of that.

But yeah, trending on TikTok at the moment.

Pull out is trending on TikTok.

The rhythm method, the crossing your fingers method, or my personal method, the algorithm method.

That's where you spend so long trawling the internet, both parties lose interest in having sex.

It's a very effective

contraception.

I found that the lifelong obsession with cricket statistics works pretty well as well, actually.

Stap me till I'm soft, baby.

Family show.

Women's health leaders are concerned that nonsense about hormonal contraception posted on TikTok and Instagram is driving a dramatic rise in unplanned pregnancies and abortions.

So there's videos out there with hundreds of thousands of views from

various influencers claiming that the pill is this generation cigarettes.

But I thought this generation cigarettes was vapes.

But,

you know,

it's basically wellness influencers promoting this who are paid to promote alternative methods.

You know the type that I'm talking about.

If you've seen them on social media, they want to tell you about their youth and health alexia.

And somewhere along the line, it contains their own urine.

And you can buy it, you know.

And they'll say things like, I don't eat food, I eat my feelings.

I literally write the emotion I'm feeling on a piece of paper and eat it.

And you can make that more delicious by adding sriracha.

Please hit subscribe.

Next week, I'll be telling you about bum hole bathing.

That's where you go into your garden, offer your ring piece to the sun, and that will unblock any negative emotions you may have around rampant exhibitionism.

These are the kind of people filling up the ears of impressionable young women on TikTok.

And I sort of understand where it comes from because, you know, in the 70s, feminism was concerned about the fact that male doctors were prescribing all this stuff for women, but not listening to women's needs or understanding women's body.

And everything medically based,

all medical-based research is based on men as the default.

So, you know, there should be a healthy amount of scepticism around

stuff that's historically gone before, but there has to be a middle ground between

that and this kind of like, yeah, sure, just pull out.

Actually, if you do it standing up, you can't, you know, you're going back to like teenage,

like, if you do it standing up, you're not going to get pregnant.

I mean, what's where's it going to end?

Well, I mean, I think if you do it whilst

whilst thinking about

1980s Wimbledon finals, that's You probably won't get pregnant there either.

I mean,

spread that rumour.

Particularly Connor's McEnroe.

I shouldn't be using TikTok for finding kidney stone treatments by watching some of these videos.

So

probably don't be looking at you, right?

TikTok MD is like Doogie Hauser MD, as in it's literally kids.

It's like the same.

It's just children telling other children what to...

I saw one the other day that was about dry shampoo and this woman going i recommend this dry shampoo over this one and like because there's toxic chemicals in in in this dry shampoo uh because there's you the things you don't want are butane and propane i'm like the things that make aerosols work

i mean those are literally so you can't recommend another aerosol

like aren't they the propellants am i missing something i thought those were the things that made an aerosol be an aerosol with my hair care regime it's neat butane and neat propane four times a day.

So you can go to a barbershop or a petrol pump, one or the other.

Anivab, let's finish with some entertainment news from India.

Well, the latest sort of ticket price controversy, we had the Oasis reunion tickets over here, people complaining about how much they were costing and the hotels and things putting their prices up around it.

Cold Play

have been causing a bit of a rumpus in India with the secondary market for their tickets for their shows next year.

Cold play, big band from your country, Andy, very big I think in the nineteen hundreds and subsequently.

New in India,

big fan base, but

basically we have about one percent of this country listens to English music.

And so about you know, say maybe a few hundred thousand people were expected to buy tickets.

They put a hundred and eighty thousand tickets on sale on a website called My Show, which is sort of India's Ticketmaster.

And 42 million people tried to buy tickets.

Now, what I know, this is my conundrum.

Basically, now the government's got involved, and they're saying that essentially what Book My Show tried to do is make it democratic.

And India being the technology capital of the world, a bunch of bots and server farms got involved, bought all those tickets, and put it on reselling platforms like Via Gogo.

And the tickets were being resold for £9,000.

Now,

there is a fan base for ColdPlay in India, I'm sure, but I don't know how many Gen Z Indian kids are running out to buy £9,000 tickets for ColdPlay.

So, the debate going on in India was, you know, are there these many ColdPlay fans in India?

Because the Mumbai queue, there's a queue, so you signed up to buy tickets, it was all at one time, 12 o'clock on Saturday.

And I tried to buy tickets, for example, and it said, I'm 20 million in the queue for Mumbai.

And Mumbai only 16 million people.

So

of which amount.

In India, being 20 million in the queue is quite near the front of the queue for a lot of people.

I shouldn't have given up.

I shouldn't have.

So I want to know what you guys think.

Do you think this is a massive technology scam slash complex thing to resell?

Or do you think suddenly India has found coldplate?

They got so horny by it, it caused a population explosion almost instantly.

Coldplay have made India so horny.

Well, you say it's coldplate.

I did once statistically work out that the population of India more than doubled during the test match cricket career of Sachin Tendulka, which did suggest that India found his perfectly correct high high front elbow sometimes a little too much to deal with alone.

So, yeah, I mean, it does seem like a lot to pay for a concert, particularly, for example, when you can buy tickets to my forthcoming tour show starting on the 1st of November, way, way cheaper than £9,000 each.

In fact, I think it's generally around about £17 to £20.

All the dates are on my website, andydolsom.co.uk.

I will be, as always, solving all the world's greatest social and political problems through the medium of comedy.

So, do buy your tickets for that.

All the tickets, shows go on, well, start of November to sometime in April, dotted around the UK.

And hopefully, we'll be announcing some Europe dates soon as well.

Tiff, anything to plug?

Yes, I'm going to be in Rotterdam, if you're there, doing a show on Friday and in Paris on Wednesday.

So, any bugler listeners, you know, in those areas or surrounds, get yourself along to the shows.

Going to be doing some solo shows there.

I'll be at the Nottingham Comedy Festival in November and also in Edinburgh in December, recording husband material, the show I had at the Edinburgh Fringe.

So, if you go to my Instagram, you can find all the dates for those kind of things.

Hi, Rob.

Just one very quick thing.

I'll be back in the United Kingdom end of October for a short stint.

I will be at the Canterbury Comedy Festival

because I'm just going through a very pious phase.

Be a good place to perform.

I think it's the 25th of October, but I will put it out on Twitter.

Great.

We are having a week off the bugle next week because I will be

busy watching cricket in Pakistan by this time next week.

The cricket season in England finished, as we record, yesterday afternoon, and the remorseless churn of international sport is such that England some of the England players I think flew straight out after that game to Pakistan so we have a week off we will have a couple of bugles whilst I'm in Pakistan through October and then

back with regular shows for the rest of the year when of course also I will be on tour with my stand-up show the Zoltgeist

so thank you for listening buglers don't forget to join the bugle voluntary subscription scheme to give one of our occurrence contributions to help keep this show free flourishing and independent and get access to the world-exclusive monthly Ask Andy Show.

We're recording another one pretty soon, Chris.

Next couple of days,

two days' time, Andy.

Two days' time.

There we go.

Wednesday.

Questions incoming now.

All right.

And thank you, as always, to all those who do subscribe.

Thanks for your support.

Until we'll have a bonus sub-episode next week and then back with a full bugle the week after that.

Thank you for listening.

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.