2024 so far. Perfectly normal.

Speaker 1 The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Speaker 2 Hello buglers and welcome to another bonus bugle issue 4312 sub-episode B for back in a few weeks but currently still on our break. I am Andy Zoltzmann.

Speaker 2 As we speak I am communing with Cantabrian cheeses I can barely pronounce and of course spending most of my time looking forward to seeing you all in person during my imminent stand-up tour beginning in November running through to 2025.

Speaker 2 Details at andysaltzman.co.uk Whilst you're feverishly booking your tickets to see the Zoltgeist, let's take this moment to look back on what has been quite an eventful 2024 so far.

Speaker 2 A year that still has a pretty good shout at being one of the best four years of the decade so far. And what a close-fought competition that is proving to be, like an Olympic gymnastics final.

Speaker 2 Might all come down to whether it can nail the dismount. We are going to do this chronologically.
So here is... Hang on, let me just check my calendar.
January. January 2024.

Speaker 7 Top story this week, 2024 has begun.

Speaker 8 Yes, as I said, another new year.

Speaker 3 And it's set to be a year of contests, conflicts, frankly harrowing matchups, and the kind of head-to-head encounters that make you feel like head-butting yourself in despair at what we're doing to ourselves as a species.

Speaker 8 And this week on the Bugle, we look at some of the defining contests that are going to shape this year of contests and uh well let's start with the defining contest that looks set to be the most defining and contested defining contest of the year and that is Donald Trump against American democracy.

Speaker 17 Are you both excited at the prospect of

Speaker 17 well what 10 months now of pure, unadulterated,

Speaker 17 inescapable Trumpian horror?

Speaker 20 I mean, Andy, this is wild. This is the Supreme Court has said that they're going to take up the appeal that Mr.

Speaker 20 Trump has made against the Colorado Court that said he couldn't be on the ballot in Colorado.

Speaker 20 The Supreme Court has said they'll hear it.

Speaker 12 Look,

Speaker 20 the argument against taking Trump off the ballot is that to take him off the ballot will cause widespread chaos.

Speaker 20 But I feel like they've missed the point at which leaving him on the ballot will cause widespread chaos.

Speaker 20 It's extraordinary.

Speaker 20 I think this is like the most interesting thing about this story for me, Andy, is that this is a court now, the Supreme Court that is so politicised that no matter what they decide, a significant proportion of the population will refuse to accept the ruling.

Speaker 20 It's like at a wedding if the priest goes, I now declare you man and wife, and the groom's half of the room goes, yeah, right.

Speaker 20 In this analogy, January 6th is the part where the priest goes, speak now or forever hold your peace, and then a social media paleo influencer in a buffalo hat charges the crush.

Speaker 5 So, yeah, I mean, it is, I mean, this idea that Trump can't be taken off the ballot because it would cause widespread chaos.

Speaker 13 I mean, it does show that irony is still one of our most implacable foes as a species.

Speaker 5 Basically, what this is saying is that we can't take that shark out of the swimming pool because doing so might cause some people sunbathing around the pool to get splashed a bit.

Speaker 13 I don't care if it's kids' compulsory swimming hour now or not.

Speaker 5 Rules are rules. So

Speaker 9 it's

Speaker 4 also, as you said, the also, as you said, it's the Supreme Court that is going to make this ruling, following on from the ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court and other Supreme Courts late last year,

Speaker 10 which disqualified Trump from the ballot for being an insurrectionist.

Speaker 5 And the Supreme Court ruling will apply nationwide.

Speaker 10 So Trump's presence on the ballot paper is up to the Supreme Court.

Speaker 5 And of course, the people in the Supreme Court were up to Donald Trump, aka the defendant, whilst he was president, because, well, America is a f ⁇ ing idiot, essentially.

Speaker 11 So that's the situation that we're in.

Speaker 14 Anuvab, I mean, how much coverage does, I think, I mean, increasingly here in Britain, certainly, we're obsessed with American politics.

Speaker 15 Does it get the same level of coverage in the Indian news media?

Speaker 25 It does. And I think one of the things that resonates very well with India is that were he to be elected president and then be convicted, he could run the country from jail.

Speaker 25 And that we can really identify with because some ministers have had to face that situation.

Speaker 25 There was even some Indian leading corporate figures who were imprisoned for financial fraud, who sold hotels in New York City, sitting in the main jail in Delhi.

Speaker 25 So the fact that he can be a functioning president finally means that the American democracy is catching up with the more mature democracy, which is India,

Speaker 27 and letting things be fluid. And also,

Speaker 25 times like this, you know, when there is uncertain democracy, is when I usually turn to Napoleon. I often turn to Napoleon,

Speaker 25 but this in particular, because Napoleon did this the right way. He was, but there was a council that was going to run France, and it had to have five people on it.

Speaker 25 There's a lot of debate on who should be on the council. Napoleon wanted to be the head of the council, so he had the vote at gunpoint.

Speaker 3 So, you know, those things really help you know they they really help the situation so i think like you said to have some supreme court judges that you've appointed you know it's i mean i'm all for for a fair fight but it's it's a bit of a help yeah i mean this whole election campaign of you know trump versus american democracy it's essentially a major sub-conflict in the ongoing um bout between america and its most lasting hate hated and remorseless opponent um the usa and trump obviously the bloviating f pigs bloviating f pig, the grand wizard of groundless whinging, the undisputed archduke of arse holitude and dick waddery, the foremost living example of the disappointingly tenacious mammalian species which goes by the Latin name Cancerous cantankerous, by this time next year could be set to move into either the White House or, as you said, Anavab, a maximum security penitentiary, or both, or a specially configured maximum security White House that can double up as both.

Speaker 2 And now here are some bugle highlights from February.

Speaker 15 What we've had has been reports that Trump supporters have apparently pledged that they will wage, quotes, holy war against Taylor Swift, the multi-award-winning singer and Kansas City Chiefs head coach.

Speaker 14 There appears to be an assumption that there is a conspiracy involving Swift

Speaker 15 to basically

Speaker 32 steal yet another election from Trump.

Speaker 33 Nish, I know you're a died-in-the-wolf swifty.

Speaker 34 I'm one of the great Swifties.

Speaker 22 I've got my eras tour back tattoo, locked and loaded for when she gets here next year.

Speaker 5 I am. Gets here to the shed.

Speaker 34 It is interesting, she's playing stadiums across the country, but she is playing the shed as a warm-up gig.

Speaker 17 Little acoustic.

Speaker 22 Just Andy and Taylor Swift.

Speaker 33 Yeah, I said she could look at my

Speaker 18 collection of signed cricket bats.

Speaker 36 Well, we know she likes sports.

Speaker 17 She likes sports. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 34 Yeah, so she's dating. Now, how do you pronounce this man's surname? Is it Kelsey? Travis Kelsey.
Travis Kelsey, right. So she's now being accused.

Speaker 12 It's Trey Vice Kelsey.

Speaker 34 She's dating Trey Vice Kelsey.

Speaker 34 So she is now being accused by prominent Trump supporting Republicans of being an op or a psy-op engineered by the deep state in order to benefit Joe Biden.

Speaker 22 I'm reading these words from the New York Times.

Speaker 34 Okay, so she is in a relationship with Travis Kelsey and he plays for the Kansas City Chiefs. He's the star tight end, which is amazingly a position

Speaker 22 in American football and also pornography.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 34 so

Speaker 34 this right-wing conspiracy that the Kansas City Chiefs have been given a free pass to the Super Bowl so that Taylor Swift can be pictured in the stands at the Super Bowl and because of that people will vote for Joe Biden.

Speaker 34 Am I summarizing that correctly?

Speaker 36 No, that is the absolutely correct summary. Yeah.

Speaker 34 And I'll tell you what, I think we can all agree. If there's one organisation that is going to favour progressive politics, it is the National Football League.

Speaker 34 It is the organisation that punished Colin Kaepernick, not for protesting the national anthem, but for not protesting it hard enough.

Speaker 22 They wanted Kaepernick down on both knees.

Speaker 34 The the fact that he was taking one knee was not uh not enough for them and it's an organization that has hosted such progressive franchises as the new england clan robes and the minnesota white men of the best

Speaker 17 um reince prebus um again i'm have i've pronounced that right sound right

Speaker 27 former republican national committee chair if indeed he exists reince priebus is a legal tenet

Speaker 27 for you being arrested for

Speaker 27 he

Speaker 15 He said that he thinks the Republicans are pursuing a questionable strategy by attacking Taylor Swift and the NFL.

Speaker 18 And he was the one that said that it is a powder cake of stupidity.

Speaker 15 He said, I think we ought to have a few things in America that we can agree on, and those are two things.

Speaker 26 So, I mean, is that,

Speaker 24 I mean, is that, for a start, are those the only two things America can hope to agree on?

Speaker 15 And even if that is the case, should Taylor Swift be I mean, should America have to be of one mind about the multi-Grammy award hoarding pop through the door?

Speaker 19 Hoarding!

Speaker 19 Our dissenting views on the Pennsylvania-born Shake It Off star are no longer acceptable in the so-called land of the free.

Speaker 36 Listen, I've got to put my hands up here to say that I am not completely impartial on the whole Trump versus Swift thing.

Speaker 36 On the one hand, I increasingly feel there's something a little bit off about Trump.

Speaker 40 And on the other, I absolutely, I genuinely love Swift.

Speaker 28 I love Shake It Off.

Speaker 40 I'm a huge fan of Lover. That's a great album.

Speaker 28 I adored Gulliver's Travels.

Speaker 27 Lemuel Gulliver.

Speaker 38 There aren't enough people called Lemuel these days.

Speaker 12 There should be more Lemules.

Speaker 18 There must be some in the NFL. They've got...

Speaker 25 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 26 Well, there are fewer than you think, because the difficulty is the minute you've managed to get to assemble a decent number of lemules, they all panic and run off a cliff.

Speaker 19 Anyway,

Speaker 23 Travis Kelsey is, as Nish says, the tight end. The tight end.

Speaker 26 For the Kansas City Chiefs.

Speaker 27 I do love that that is a position.

Speaker 36 I've seen that guy in his game day leggings, and let me tell you, it is not a misnomer.

Speaker 36 Other positions in American football include wide on low sack and deep back hole presumably anyway but look it strikes me that uh conspiracy theories um are just the standard is dropping back in the day it was the illuminati and global elites people were convinced that the moon landings were faked but the nfl are throwing games to get biden elected just feels a bit lowbrow you know only a couple of notches above greg wallace is using tick tock to try and shift the odds on who's going home this week on dancing on ice so in an attempt to rectify this situation and with one eye on merch opportunities, I've constructed a random conspiracy theory generator

Speaker 26 so that would-be conspiracists and lonely men sitting in their basements on jizz-encrusted cushions can once again get behind some proper gold-plated batch shittery.

Speaker 38 So it's quite a simple system.

Speaker 23 You spin each of these three wheels once.

Speaker 23 The first determines what is being affected, the second determines how it is being affected, and the third determines who is doing the affecting. So let's have a go.

Speaker 28 All right, so spin the first wheel.

Speaker 36 Unidentified flying objects.

Speaker 19 Spin the second

Speaker 40 are being chemically castrated by, spin the third,

Speaker 23 the Jews.

Speaker 27 Let's have another go. Spin one.

Speaker 23 White history. Spin two

Speaker 40 was constructed in a lab by, and number three,

Speaker 27 the Jews

Speaker 19 let's go spin one

Speaker 30 JFK classic two

Speaker 23 is spread in chemtrails by three

Speaker 27 The Jews. It is always the Jews in conspiracy theories.

Speaker 36 They're basically like creative writing projects by anti-Semites.

Speaker 23 The third wheel in this system is just a disc with the Jews written all around it it's like the dartboard at Jeremy Corbyn's house

Speaker 36 you can buy that from the bugle shop

Speaker 29 moving on now to March Google has launched a five million dollar prize fund for people to find

Speaker 29 things that quantum computers can actually do

Speaker 29 because I mean to be honest I don't understand whenever the word I think the word quantum just gets thrown around to stop people asking questions because as soon as someone says quantum you think oh this is way beyond my level of human comprehension you know that's why you know the James Bond film quantum of solace I just I couldn't I couldn't watch it I thought no

Speaker 29 I can't but but so so but luckily we have we have two trained quantum physicists

Speaker 29 with us today. So they're trying to find ways to actually use these incredible computers that are almost so powerful that they have no application in the known universe.

Speaker 29 So how is Google intending to do this, Josh? So I think this is actually a huge thing to do, right?

Speaker 29 I think Google should have someone in charge of whenever they spend billions of dollars making a new kind of computer, just tapping a lead engineer and going, hey, why the fuck did you do that?

Speaker 30 I think it's important.

Speaker 19 It is.

Speaker 29 But this is the thing. They've launched a $5 million prize to find actual uses for these computers they've built.
That's not a contest. That's a job.
Give people money to do science for you, Google.

Speaker 29 You have all the money and that's what it's for. Why are they treating quantum physics like a fing scratch-off lottery ticket?

Speaker 29 Do they think the world is just full of unemployed quantum scientists sitting around entering contests all day? No.

Speaker 29 I assume they're out there doing calculations on a dry erase board or listening to the bugle and then writing me angry emails about how I misunderstand and mischaracterize their jobs. Just

Speaker 29 pay people to do things. That's what I do when I need something done.
I don't offer a $50 prize for anyone who can figure out how to get me to the airport for a gig. I call a fing cab.

Speaker 3 Alice,

Speaker 29 are you going to enter this competition?

Speaker 20 I absolutely will. Even though the prize doesn't cover one of the most interesting parts of the problem, which is, as Bill Pfefferman at the University of Chicago says,

Speaker 20 they need to figure out algorithms that require a better understanding of how the computer works, such as how to deal with noise and errors.

Speaker 20 So basically, they've got computers that don't work very well and they're not sure what they're meant to do,

Speaker 20 which I think is like the perfect kind of computer. On the bright side, it being quantum, there is an alternate universe in which these computers have a purpose and work really well.

Speaker 20 So that's something.

Speaker 29 Can any of you explain what quantum computers do here in Cambridge?

Speaker 29 No, correct. There we go.

Speaker 29 I just want to hop in.

Speaker 20 But to be fair, someone who doesn't know what quantum computers would do would say they don't know what quantum computers can do, and somebody who does know what quantum computers do also knows that they don't know what quantum computers do.

Speaker 29 Andy, I love

Speaker 29 the crowd interactions you're having at this show. You've asked, does anyone know what quantum computers do? You've asked, does anyone have faith in democracy? And you've asked, does anyone like bees?

Speaker 29 Most comedy shows, I don't know if this audience knows this, the comedian just looks at the two people in the front row and goes, are you two?

Speaker 2 And now, as sure as regret follows kebab, April follows March.

Speaker 7 Top story this week, Donald Trump is on trial.

Speaker 43 Well, just a quick quick uh refresher for those of you who've forgotten how this story all started well as I said in the 1770s America for some reason thought it could be trusted with itself one thing led to another and it ended up voting in a self-proclaimed sex pest as president and hence we are where we are Hari I mean you are right there as our official Donald Trump's legal affairs correspondent in in New York

Speaker 32 just I mean

Speaker 33 The city must have been, yeah, has it been played on big screens in Times Square? There's sort of huge parties where everyone's gathering to watch the death of American hope and democracy.

Speaker 44 Andy, can we start with something lighter like Iran and Israel?

Speaker 47 Because with Iran and Israel, there's hope there.

Speaker 49 Oh, right.

Speaker 35 Really?

Speaker 48 That there is an yeah, because with the end, the pain will stop.

Speaker 49 Okay, good.

Speaker 49 So

Speaker 50 I see hope in that.

Speaker 50 No, no, we're not watching this on a big screen.

Speaker 46 I don't think you understand this, Endy. We're all trying to forget, right?

Speaker 23 Okay, he's from here. Yes.
We did this.

Speaker 48 Every time we see him, it's a reminder of we could have stopped this a long time ago. And we just let, this is a fun sideshow.

Speaker 44 And we just kept doing it over.

Speaker 35 Let's watch where this goes. Married again, had an affair.
Oh, another lawsuit.

Speaker 49 He's bankrupt. Has a TV show.

Speaker 46 Oh, this is entertaining.

Speaker 49 We caused this.

Speaker 35 We don't like thinking about it.

Speaker 52 So far, we've had the selection of the jury, which is a rather complicated process, our hair, in which they have to find 12 people who don't have an opinion on Donald Trump.

Speaker 52 Now, I mean, I think you could scour the entire universe, and the best you could possibly hope for is 12 recently slaughtered goldfish would be the closest you can get to this.

Speaker 54 Yeah, I was just like, do you have to sort of, if you're trying to construct a jury, do you just have to hope that there's been a really fortunate like timing with a full ward of coma patients who've all

Speaker 54 sort of went down and came up at exactly the same time?

Speaker 1 And that's because it does strike me as one of those things where not

Speaker 54 having any sort of opinion is in and of itself sort of like it's not a neutral thing to be entirely unaware of what's going on.

Speaker 54 And to be fair, I do really like admire the people who were able to, because like half the people straight away like stuck their hands up, well, there is absolutely zero way I'm going to be able to be impartial about this.

Speaker 49 And they're like, fair enough,

Speaker 54 right? Because let's be honest, being on that jury would be exciting, but equally, probably lead to you getting loads of death threats.

Speaker 37 So that would be less fun.

Speaker 46 I mean, the troubling thing about everyone leaving, you know, like having an opinion and then being dismissed, is that I'm sure almost all of them are liberal, right?

Speaker 48 Because liberals emote.

Speaker 51 When they talk about them, they get angry.

Speaker 48 They don't play it close close to the vest. Conservatives play it close to the vest, right?

Speaker 23 Like conservatives in New York City, particularly, they keep it close.

Speaker 48 Like, I had no idea anyone I knew voted for Trump until after he won the election, and all of a sudden, their social media is suspiciously quiet, right?

Speaker 50 And at that point, you're like, gotcha.

Speaker 48 You know what I mean?

Speaker 25 And that's how he'll get acquitted because they keep it close to the vest.

Speaker 47 They shut up. They don't let people see, oh, I hate Trump.

Speaker 51 No, they shut up, they vote for him, and he wins.

Speaker 54 But so in that case, do you regret having spoken about him previously, sort of on stage, on podcasts, on social media, and everything? Because you could have been in that jury otherwise.

Speaker 39 Oh, no, because look at where it's taken me.

Speaker 58 Look at where talking about him has taken me.

Speaker 48 You know, the jury, there's...

Speaker 50 First of all, the fact they found 12 is shocking to me and makes me suspect some things.

Speaker 39 And here's here's just a review of one of the jurors because they listed some of the characteristics of some of the jurors.

Speaker 46 One juror watches MSNBC and Fox News and has no opinion of Donald Trump.

Speaker 27 So clearly, this is a bot.

Speaker 14 They are putting bots on the jury.

Speaker 46 Like, this is where it's come to.

Speaker 51 Another one

Speaker 48 said that

Speaker 48 she appreciated the fact that

Speaker 39 he speaks his mind.

Speaker 56 Watch stand-up if you feel that way.

Speaker 30 That is not...

Speaker 59 A lot of the men just,

Speaker 51 you know.

Speaker 23 And then there was one juror.

Speaker 58 This is a perfect juror.

Speaker 12 This is actually the kind of juror we need.

Speaker 39 He said, I find him fascinating.

Speaker 58 He walks into a room and he sets people off one way or another.

Speaker 39 And I find that really interesting. Really?

Speaker 59 This one guy could do all this. See, that's a perfect juror because if you can't figure out why

Speaker 59 and you don't follow the news, clearly you have no stake in anything.

Speaker 59 Right? That's perfect.

Speaker 58 That's like watching sports and never has a team.

Speaker 49 Never roots.

Speaker 22 Just watches.

Speaker 56 And imagine him saying, I find it interesting how a person hits the ball and everyone chases the ball.

Speaker 58 How could one ball do all this?

Speaker 59 Absolutely.

Speaker 15 But there's not going to be, I can't find 12 of those.

Speaker 49 Yeah.

Speaker 54 I think that the sort of ideal jury is evidently comprised of, does anyone remember that Futurama episode where they went to war with the neutral planet?

Speaker 54 It was like, your neutralness, it's a bejolette. If I die, tell my wife hello.

Speaker 54 And you're like, it's that person that you need 12 times. Or maybe like, you know, the person who says, oh, I watch MSNBC and Fox News and everything.
All this person was aware of.

Speaker 54 back in when Donald Trump first announced that he was going to be running for president. this person was a New Yorker, right?

Speaker 54 And they were like, from this moment, this guy might win, and if he does win, eventually, the mother of all court cases is going to land in a New York City courtroom.

Speaker 54 And I will do everything within my power to live my life as the perfect jury member so that when the time comes, I will be there, because that is my greatest ambition.

Speaker 54 So, therefore, like spending exactly equal amounts of time watching, like, oh, it's

Speaker 54 time to watch Rachel Maddow for half an hour and then switch over to Sean Hannity for exactly the same amount of time.

Speaker 54 I think, like, no one can possibly.

Speaker 46 It just feels like someone who watches that much news and doesn't have an opinion is someone who probably can't make a decision.

Speaker 44 And is that what you want on a jury?

Speaker 2 Well, that was April. Now, here is something from the bugle in the merry month of, not very merry, month of May.

Speaker 32 In other American news now, well you don't just have to be a presidential candidate to talk absolute unutterable bullshit.

Speaker 6 As proved this week by Harrison Butker, the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs,

Speaker 32 who gave a commencement speech at Benedictine College, a Catholic school in Kansas,

Speaker 10 in which

Speaker 60 not only did he criticize President Biden, but he also suggested that women should focus on being mothers and wives rather than pursuing careers

Speaker 10 and also laid into various other parts of society.

Speaker 30 In, I think, a speech that really proved that

Speaker 60 there is a time and a place for athletes to talk

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 32 subjects that they should talk about.

Speaker 43 And look, I don't want to be prescriptive about saying all athletes, all sports people should steer clear of politics. I don't believe that.

Speaker 13 I just believe that if you are Harrison Butker, you should probably

Speaker 24 shut the f up.

Speaker 45 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 43 Because look, it's easy to denigrate sports people as unsophisticated spurners of the intellectual realm who've pointlessly devoted their lives to the physical and the fundamentally irrelevant.

Speaker 60 It's easy, but it's also, I think, mostly wrong.

Speaker 60 These people are often strivers for some form of human perfection, however fleetingly ephemeral, challenging themselves in multiple dimensions of excellence, mental, spiritual, physical, and temperamental.

Speaker 42 The complexity of a sport like American football as well requires a mental combination of study, study, memory, instinctual perception, spontaneity in the face of physical danger, unless you are Harrison Butker, in which case you have to run up and boost a ball with minimal risk of injury.

Speaker 43 Obviously, it's not as simple as that, but it is as simple as that.

Speaker 47 It's as simple as that.

Speaker 35 And you're absolutely correct.

Speaker 47 Also, the fact that this isn't the result of him getting hit in the head repeatedly since he's a kicker.

Speaker 61 Yeah, I was wondering. So the CTE doesn't, because I thought maybe CTE had prevented him from reading the room or just reading.

Speaker 31 Unless it can go up, can it migrate from the foot up to the body?

Speaker 51 It's weird because Travis Kelsey is his teammate who is dating Taylor Swift.

Speaker 30 Yes.

Speaker 57 So what does he see?

Speaker 47 What does Butker see when he sees Taylor Swift? What does he say to Travis Kelsey?

Speaker 50 Like, it was a great concert.

Speaker 22 So when is she giving up this singing hobby so we can finally get down to you having kids?

Speaker 7 He quoted Taylor Swift in his speech.

Speaker 13 The lyric familiarity breeds contempt.

Speaker 31 I mean, I'm not a huge Swifty.

Speaker 43 I don't know a great deal about

Speaker 60 the Swifty and Urva, but she does not seem to be the most obvious source of inspiration for someone arguing that women should stay in the home and historic patriarchy with

Speaker 30 humanity.

Speaker 44 Well, he said that with the idea that women don't understand irony.

Speaker 31 Added to that as well, it's also been reported that Harrison Butker's mother

Speaker 7 is a fairly high-flying scientist as well, who's worked in oncology.

Speaker 55 So, again, that's it's quite hard to see where these views

Speaker 30 have, you know, what evidence he's been looking at here.

Speaker 44 Oh, I get it, Andy.

Speaker 23 How many birthdays do you think she missed because she was working?

Speaker 27 How many times was she just too

Speaker 51 busy to be there? Do you think he wanted to kick a football?

Speaker 51 It's what he had to do.

Speaker 50 He was kicking footballs, waiting for his mom to come home, and he got good enough at it to play professionally.

Speaker 61 Yeah, that's actually, let's, I think, when in doubt, don't blame a man for his actions. Let's blame his mother.

Speaker 30 There's always a woman.

Speaker 61 If you look around hard enough, there's always a woman at fault for this kind of thing.

Speaker 61 I think this is a reaction to the fact that Nikki Glazer did the best at the roast of Tom Brady.

Speaker 61 I was like, we need to put these women in their place. Like, because she absolutely nailed that.
She was so funny. So I think

Speaker 61 this is a kickback. He sort of said, my wife was, listen, and it's fine if these are his beliefs,

Speaker 61 which I disagree with. It's more that you're at a college doing a commencement speech to women who are gone into further education.
They're not doing courses on nappy changing and meatloaf cooking.

Speaker 61 Like, they're there because they want to do something, you know, like your mum did.

Speaker 61 But he said, My wife was happiest when she accepted her role as homemaker, which sounds like an official job that she applied for, you know, salary negotiable, depending on my mood, hours endless.

Speaker 61 Welcome to the team. Uh, so the women should like stick to being homemakers and leave men to the real jobs, like kicking a pigskin.

Speaker 32 Well, that's fair, and you know, it is it was a speech suffused by his uh his deep uh Catholic faith.

Speaker 30 Um,

Speaker 60 I mean, he did also rail against the tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Speaker 43 Now, I think I've laid my cards fairly firmly on the table over the course of the Bugles history in that I am not a Christian,

Speaker 30 but

Speaker 32 I seem to remember that Jesus Christ, the number one ranked Christian Messiah, if memory serves,

Speaker 32 was pretty pro-diversity, equity, and inclusion generally. I mean, he only employed 12 guys

Speaker 43 in his boardroom. But still, you know, what he said, let's judge him by what he said, not by his recruitment policy.
You know,

Speaker 31 he did seem to play those cards pretty strongly.

Speaker 43 But like I said, I'm a bit out of the loop.

Speaker 51 The tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Speaker 12 The tyranny of inclusion.

Speaker 50 I teach my kid that all the time.

Speaker 51 I tell my kid all the time, leave the minority kids out. And that means I do not want you looking in a mirror.

Speaker 4 He did say some things that I think no one can argue with, including these words.

Speaker 52 Everything I'm saying to you is not from a place of wisdom.

Speaker 37 I mean, it's good to say we'll let those cards on Taylor.

Speaker 2 Well, that was May, and what better to follow May than June?

Speaker 6 Top story, democracy is reigning.

Speaker 52 Well, yes, if democracy be the food of love, we're all going to be single and vomiting within four weeks.

Speaker 52 because it's election time and

Speaker 52 this week we've had we've had well two debates the leaders we had Starmer against Sunak on Tuesday we had the seven prong debate last night anyone watch it last night

Speaker 45 how was it

Speaker 62 yeah

Speaker 52 I mean it sort of does make you think with those all the D-Day anniversaries that we had this week that someone should have said I'm really sorry you died for this shit

Speaker 52 but no one, I mean, I think certainly watching the seven-prong debate last night, about on a level with dripping vinegar in your eyeballs whilst listening to Rudy Giuliani sing, You Make Me Feel Nike Like a Natural Woman

Speaker 52 in terms of pure enjoyability.

Speaker 60 Nish, you obviously are

Speaker 52 global democracy correspondent and aficionado.

Speaker 52 Have you enjoyed it so far?

Speaker 1 Well, let me just start with the debates, because the debates are two of the worst pieces of television of all time. And take that from me.

Speaker 1 Someone who's produced several of the worst pieces of television of all time. I did a show for Quibi.
There was a network that was so shit it got cancelled in the middle of its own existence.

Speaker 1 Not a programme, the whole network. And in many ways, this Conservative campaign is the Quibi of election campaigns.

Speaker 1 It's a bad idea, being executed poorly, and it's going to end in a British Indian man losing his job.

Speaker 1 We've got some exciting breaking news.

Speaker 1 The original Conservative slogan, this is just broken, just as I was walking on stage, clear plan, bold action, secure future, has been replaced by, oh shit, oh f ⁇ ing kill me.

Speaker 1 The campaign started very poorly. Rishisunek announced the election in the rain without an umbrella.
Then he posed in front of an exit sign which was pointing directly at his f ⁇ ing head.

Speaker 1 He asked folks in Wales if they were looking forward to the European Football Championships, a tournament Wales did not qualify for.

Speaker 1 He started his campaign with a launch event at the Titanic site when he was immediately asked by a journalist if he was the leader of a sinking ship.

Speaker 1 Basically, Rishi Sudak at this campaign, I haven't seen an Asian man look this uncomfortable since the night I lost my virginity.

Speaker 37 It is

Speaker 1 absolutely extraordinary. The first big policy announcement was national service for young people.

Speaker 1 Telling a generation of young people who have already given up two years of their lives to protect older people from the novel coronavirus that they now need to do national service is insulting enough but that is not anywhere near the top of the list of this nation's problems.

Speaker 1 We are currently contracting diarrhea-based diseases from our tap water and when we contact the water companies they advise us to simply ship directly into the rivers to quote cut out the middleman.

Speaker 45 Then

Speaker 1 on top of all of this this week Rishi Silak was heavily criticised for not being at a part of the 80th anniversary D-Day ceremony on Thursday.

Speaker 1 He attended several of the events but then before the massive event involving all of the world leaders, he traveled back from France to the UK to record a television interview that is set to go out next week.

Speaker 1 The ITV journalist doing the interview confirmed that that was the only slot offered by 10 Downing Street.

Speaker 1 It is a huge PR gap, and incredibly, Rishi Tunak's election is going so badly that the only person who's had a worse D-Day is Adolf Hitler.

Speaker 53 I mean,

Speaker 20 say what you like.

Speaker 20 Say what you like about Hitler. He did kill Hitler.

Speaker 52 Alice, have you enjoyed the opening gambits of our glorious

Speaker 52 Festival of Democratic Freedom here?

Speaker 20 I mean, it is a wonderful thing to watch from a safe distance.

Speaker 20 I've been particularly enjoying Nigel Farage's attempt to claw his way back into relevancy. That's been very exciting.
Have you guys been following that, his reform UK?

Speaker 45 Oh yeah, yeah, we're all over it.

Speaker 43 Chris has got the tattoo, isn't he?

Speaker 1 He truly is the herpes of British politics.

Speaker 20 The movement as a new phenomenon occurring, that he is the head of a movement of something mysterious happening in the in basically that there's far-right governments rising up all over the place and

Speaker 20 he's just, I feel like he's putting the ash into fascinating observation about the rise of anti-immigrant populism during an economic downturn. You know, I just think it's

Speaker 20 he's presenting this as a new thing, a completely unprecedented thing for a nation that may perhaps feel it's humiliated itself on the global stage to feel that drawn to the person who's telling them it's somebody else's fault.

Speaker 20 They just

Speaker 20 can't see any outcomes that would be bad.

Speaker 20 As a result of the unrestrained indulgence in grievance politics by men who talk about how being a man involves being stoical while whinging like a toddler about how things aren't as good as the olden days.

Speaker 62 Have you?

Speaker 62 You know.

Speaker 62 Sorry, have you. The olden days.
Have you bought

Speaker 53 when men were men and women were your mum?

Speaker 40 Nice. You've just Rod, did you see any of the debates?

Speaker 64 Yeah, so I mean, as I mentioned, I arrived a few days ago trying to blend in. I shit in the river.

Speaker 63 So

Speaker 64 your country's in crisis, Andy.

Speaker 64 I went to a bookstore, and it was like an entire wall of books about the crisis of British politics. It was, you know, like,

Speaker 64 you know, how the commons is f and how to unf it and the Tories are bastards and

Speaker 64 labor is f and

Speaker 64 Liz Trust, how you like me now, Rishi. And like, it was just, you know, and,

Speaker 64 you know, libdems are shit, scratch and sniff pamphlet. It was like just lots of books about the turmoil in British politics.
And

Speaker 64 I'm trying to understand what's happening.

Speaker 64 And

Speaker 64 the Tories are on track to lose, according to the polls, but there's good news for them that Labor has lost two points in the polls since the election started.

Speaker 64 And so at this rate, the Tories will catch up and win the election about 37 years

Speaker 64 after the election,

Speaker 64 if I'm understanding it right. Yes.

Speaker 64 I watched the debate and

Speaker 64 Kirstarmer looks to me like

Speaker 64 someone started an illustration of a generic white guy and didn't finish.

Speaker 2 Well, that is 2024 so far. Thank you for listening.
Here's to a positive second half of this year.

Speaker 28 What could possibly go wrong?

Speaker 2 Don't answer that. You'll spoil my holiday.
Until next time, goodbye.

Speaker 65 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.

Speaker 65 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.