Why are soccer kits so woke?

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, welcome to The Bugle.

I am Andy Zoltzmann.

This is issue 4296 of this audio newspaper for this visual world.

It was recorded live at the City Varieties Music Hall in Leeds with me, Riolina, and joining us from San Francisco, NATO Green.

Producer Chris was also on stage.

Do enjoy the show.

Chris, play the tape.

This is our first ever Bugle Live in Yorkshire.

The Independent Republic of Yorkshire.

We are here in Leeds, where 300 years ago it was 1724.

Would you believe that?

Yorkshire, of course, the old Viking lands ruled over with an iron fist by,

an iron fist of blood, indeed, by the Scandinaviac warlock classes back in the day.

Have you calmed down since?

Do you think that that Viking impulse is still there?

After which the Normans got a bit feisty up here, apparently.

What do you think of the Normans here in Leeds?

Yeah.

Never forgets.

Never forgets.

Yorkshire has long memories.

At the time of the Norman conquest,

the inventory of Leeds, this city contained six plows, a priest, a church, and a mill.

It had a taxable value of six pounds.

And it's gone up a bit, I think, hasn't it?

It's gone up.

So, you know, basically, the Normans made this place.

You might not like it, but that's a fact.

Leeds.

Of course, then things toddled along for a while until the next significant development in Leeds, which was, of course, the opening of Headingley Cricket Ground in 1890.

Yorkshire, of course, famously the home county of many celebs, the Bronze Sisters.

It's a key demographic, Bronze fans.

As long as McIntyre's not taking it, I'll can have it.

Now,

and in fact, in this very theatre, the tribute act, Bronte Sisters Sledge, will be

performing the novels of the 19th century literary legends in a classic 1970s disco groove.

Also Richard III,

famous Yorkshireman, the erstwhile king, alleged nephew-murderer, and world record hold for most expensive car park bill ever.

He of course played for Yorkshire in the Wars of the Roses, the classic 15th century series.

Have you got over that yet?

You got over the record?

No.

In fact, new evidence has just suggested that Lord Stanley, after his controversial transfer to Lancashire, was offside at the Battle of Bosworth before Richard III was unceremoniously kebabbed to death.

So actually, they might have to have a replay

somewhere on the M62.

Richard III's last words famously,

I see you guys are not really going for the one horse for one kingdom, Swapsey.

But could you at least give me a lift back to the car park?

I've left the windows open on the Vitesse.

So there we go.

And of course that horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse, that was the peak of the late 15th century horse speculation bubble.

When a single horse became briefly worth the entire GDP of the English nation, the market inevitably collapsed and the Tudor regime had to impose a standard horse value tied to the European turnip.

Fact, are we learning?

There are a lot of facts in the bugle.

That's what you need to know about this if you've not seen it before.

And also, Yorkshire, as part of the Battle of the War, part of the Wars of the Roses, hosted the Battle of Townton.

in 1461.

It's good that places like Towton could still get major events in those days, days, because now it tends to go to all the big cities, doesn't it?

But in those days, you know, put in the right bidding, you've got to host a battle.

Reportedly, it was the bloodiest day of combat ever, single day of combat ever in the history of the British Isles.

28,000 people were apparently killed in a single day of hand-to-hand combat.

And you've just got to admire the work rate.

Do you not think

people in those days getting stuck in, killing each other, you know, not whinging, saying, oh no, it's not for me, I'm not feeling very well.

I just don't think our youngsters would have the capacity to do that these days.

We have to hire a load of Poles and Bulgarians to kill each other for us.

Thank you, Brussels.

So anyway, so we are recording this here in Leeds on the 24th of March.

On this day in 1829,

the Parliament passed the Roman Catholic Relief Act, allowing Catholics to serve in Parliament.

Roman Catholic Relief was, in fact, the first celebrity fundraising event in UK history, as the big stars of the day teamed up to raise money by being Roman Catholic for the evening.

Celebrity poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsy Wordsworth did a very amusing two-handed poem about a socially awkward cardinal and a foul-mouthed talking pelican.

And on the 26th of March in 1351, we had the combat of the 30.

This was

30 Breton knights versus 30 English knights in a special fight, part of the Hundred Years' War, which 100 Years' War lasted 116 years, I think.

Just, you know, you just go, I don't know.

Some people complain about them making chocolate bars shorter these days.

Yeah, but that was actually.

That squizzed people out of...

Wasn't that after-attacks?

Is that why?

Oh, yeah, it's quite possible.

It was after tax.

You had shocked life expectancy.

You want more year for your buck.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

No, I digress.

So, I mean,

so there we go.

Anyway, Anyway, we lost apparently so we never learn about it in but look at that.

Proper

St.

George's Cross on the kit in those days.

Proper.

Who cares if we f ⁇ ing lost?

At least we'll talk about this more later on.

Right, top story this week.

We're off the hook as human beings.

We haven't completely f ⁇ ed up the planet.

This is according to a declaration from the International Union of Geological Sciences, who have upheld a vote by other Boffins, stroke scientists, stroke potatoes, stroke potatoes, against

officially declaring this to be the Anthropocene age

and adding that to the timeline of the planet Earth.

Now, Rhea, you're a scientist.

You're a...

qualified scientist, the best kind of scientist.

Thank you.

So you're going to have to do the heavy lifting on this story because I.

We're lumping all science in together.

I care that this is not my area of expertise.

I don't care.

No, fine.

All right.

I'll take it.

Call me doctor.

Doctor.

Dr.

Lena.

So they've said it's not the Anthropocene era.

This is a 24-boffin-strong committee.

Yes.

Because some people had argued that we humans, the world's most famous ever species,

have had such a beshittifying impact on the planet that we've actually catapulted it into a newer geological epoch.

But they've said that's not the case.

Well, they voted against it, but it was controversial.

It was a very controversial vote because some people on the committee had actually outlasted their term.

And as you know, that if you vote when you're not supposed to be on the committee, you're no longer a geologist.

That's how that, yeah, no, they'd expired as geologists, so some people aren't sure whether they were allowed to be there.

So that's part of the problem with the vote.

But essentially, yes, they're asking whether we started a new epoch because we divide history, Geology divides like the planet's history into eras, periods, epochs, and ages.

And they wanted to start a new epoch, but then all the guys said no.

No.

Because they couldn't decide when to start it.

They wanted to start it in 1952.

What happened in 1952?

Oh, well, I know, well, here in Headingley,

who leads at Headingley, England had India nought for four at the start of their second innings.

And that was very much on the table in the debate.

They were very much discussing that.

They were were just like, but what about the thing that happened in Henley in 1952?

But it wasn't enough, and they said it wasn't, which the whole thing just blows my mind because Mother Nature has been sitting here on the planet, doing her thing, going through her ages, having her periods, right, as she's allowed to do.

And then along come a bunch of men and go, no, we're going to vote on what's happening with your body.

And quite rightly, they got shot down.

Right.

Nato, what's your view on this?

Do you think we, you know, we've put in a lot of effort as a species to fing this planet up?

Do you not think we deserve to be acknowledged for what we've done and having this epoch named after ourselves?

Yeah, Andy, the proposal was to establish the beginning of a new epoch called the Anthropocene

that reflected the the role of humanity in shaping the geologic history.

And I think they voted correctly in deciding that it's not the Anthropocene because we're already on to the next epoch which is the ktospocene

did I say that right

which is the world being shaped by k primarily the scientists who were

sorry as a scientist I'd say it was started we're in the Dicocene

epoch

that's that's what I'd argue the scientists who were working on on this proposal were working on it for 14 years and they had nothing to show for it.

14 years of work, back to the drawing board with nothing to show for it, much like my stand-up career.

And it's not really up for debate that we've wrecked the planet, but whether we've done it so badly that it leaves a mark in the Earth's substrate.

Like, a million years from now, could scientists look at a rock wall at sedimentary layers

and go, see there, see that shitty-looking layer?

That's Brexit.

You can tell it's Brexit because there's no Talesio.

We'll have a strata in the thing, and I think it'll just be a layer of microplastics.

You know, it'll just go rock, rock, rock, rock, plastic.

And then rock, rock, rock, rock, all of humanity.

Just 8 billion bodies as we f it all up.

But no, but they decided that they couldn't.

So if you don't know, you have to have a definite beginning to an epoch.

You can't just arbitrarily decide to have an epoch.

And they were arguing over 15 years, just as NATO said.

They said they were discussing it for 15 years.

What's the beginning of this epoch?

And for whatever reason, they went, We want to vote on whether it's 1952, which, as we know, is this Henley thing.

You know, and they just went, No, that's not enough.

Why they didn't, you know, but and what they're tracking, by the way, is they're tracking some of the radioactive damage that came from all the nuclear bomb testing.

And you go, So, why are we saying it started in 1952?

Surely 1945 had something major to do do with it.

But no, apparently, the Henley thing was actually more

monumental.

Freddie Truman was amazing that day.

I mean, other suggestions for what it should be called.

The Boys Will Be Boys epoch.

Bit simplistic, we're not far off.

The age of myopically self-interested, commercially driven,

bit long, and the Vroom, Vroom, Boom, Boom, Kaboom epoch.

But there were copyright issues with the 1970s prog funk metarock post-skiffle anti-grunge ban from Weatherby.

So they can do that.

But I mean, but it would be, I mean, it would be quite an impressive effort if, in this short amount of time, we've started a new epoch, because they generally last for like millions and millions of years.

The Holocene era, which we're currently stuck in, apparently, is barely 12,000 years old.

They usually take a good two and a half million years to knock off their post.

Some of the other epochs we've had, there was the Paleocene, the Oligocene, the Plastocene, the stay-on-the-scene, the luck a sexmascine,

and the worst comedian I've ever seen.

That was an

epoch in the last 20 minutes for me at the bird cage just down the road.

So, over the rest of the show, we will look at exactly why

we are fing up the planet quite so much

and why we're doing so badly as species in charge.

So,

let's have a sting, Chris.

Human instinct for completely fking pointless arguments news now.

And we had a look at the big stories from this week.

In fact, I'm looking at them now.

And I can summarise the big stories from this week as, oh, f,

oh, geez.

Ah.

Again?

Shit.

Oh, for f's sake.

So nothing of great comic levity obviously on offer there.

I did try to write a joke about the news and it came out like this.

Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the leadership of Hamas walked into a bar, and the barman said, We're closed, f off.

That's basically what I could get out of it.

So, rather than looking at all the big disputes of the world, we're going to look at some of the small disputes of the world.

Because, you know, can we really expect these big solutions, big issues to be solved, if we are not sorting out the smaller issues for ourselves?

We hear about trickle-down economics.

There's also trickle-up politics.

So the way I see it is, you know, people complain about massive corporate tax evasion.

But then who here rides a bicycle?

Yep.

And

put your hands up if you've ever cycled through a red light.

Yeah, absolutely you have.

Yeah.

So why should we expect our banks to pay their fair share of tax if people like you are setting such a fing bad example for them?

So,

you know, who here has ever had a relationship break up?

Yeah.

Do you mind if I ask the relationship broke up?

Yeah.

I picked poorly.

And yet, you know, we have our relationships break up for various reasons, and yet we expect the Middle East to magically fix itself after 5,000 years of squibbly-squabbly ever since Big G said, Yeah, you can have that big and don't you can have that bit and don't eat pigs.

So I'll tell you what, we will start.

Let's start with

America,

NATO, and the exciting news that Donald Trump, your past and potentially future president,

who

is the Bookie's favourite to win the election in November, he gave an interview with Nigel Farage.

He said that America will 100% remain in NATO.

Not you, obviously.

See, NATO is a comedian named after two things that Donald Trump hates.

So, as long as European countries play.

I would be very happy if Donald Trump pulled out of me.

And then paid you hush money.

So, on NATO, can you just bring us, you know,

what's your analysis of

the state of your election campaign?

Is NATO going to survive a second Trump term?

Well, so, I mean, it's sort of the whole thing feels like

Trump is such a gangster.

Like,

he had said that he would, quote, encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want, end quote, to NATO countries that didn't meet their financial obligations.

And now he's saying vaguely that he will 100% remain in NATO if he returns, if they don't take it.

It all feels like a big protection racket.

You know what I mean?

Like, oh, that's a nice

Belgium you you got there.

It would be a shame if anything happened to it.

You know, there's this my friend Vladimir, he doesn't wear a shirt and he gets crazy sometimes.

He has a video of me being peed on,

and

you got to put up some money, so nothing happens.

In the same interview, Trump said that there was a nice big beautiful ocean between Europe and the Americas, apropos of nothing.

And

when he's right, he's right.

There is an ocean.

Yeah, yeah.

So

he did finally discover something that was also discovered in the 15th century, but that's fine.

100%, he said, 100%.

Obviously, current legal proceedings suggest that Trump's mathematics is not always 100% completely accurate itself.

But even some Tory ministers have said we shouldn't necessarily rely on Trump.

In fact, relying on Trump to me is a bit like jumping out of a helicopter without a parachute and thinking, I'm sure a passing pterodactyl will pick me up in its beak and deposit me safely back in my garden.

So,

Rhea, I mean,

see, you probably follow, do you enjoy American politics?

Enjoy it.

Enjoy it.

I follow it.

I follow it in the same way that you keep an eye on that one crazy person that's wandering around the supermarket because you never know what they're going to pull out and stab.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, you just sort of go, ha, ha, ha, ha.

But I, you know, what I hate about this story is I hate that I kind of sort of agree with elements of it and it makes me feel sick to my stomach.

But the fact that Grant Schaps has suddenly realized that if Europe wants Europe's backyard to be safe, that Europe might have to actually defend it.

I kind of agree.

Like, NATO is, you know, is everybody's joined NATO and they've joined it just sort of going, so if we join, America's going to fight for us.

And it's true, up until now, America's just like, yeah,

where's the fight?

Where's the blood?

I'm going to do it.

And Trump's suddenly going, no, no, not us.

And they've gone, oh, shit, we'll have to do it ourselves.

But I get why.

Europe has been, you know, Europe is too advanced for its own good.

It's advanced beyond the idea of violence

as a form of solution.

And

it's bit itself in the ass with that.

Well, I mean, to be fair, we did really give it a good go.

I mean, arguably for a slightly too long.

We've been violent for longer in Europe, okay, and we got to the end of it and we tired of it, but not everybody else was done with the game.

And that's the point.

You can't retire, you know.

I'm trying to figure out how to say it in terms you'll understand.

It's sort of like

if baseball players suddenly stormed a cricket pitch and were like, we want to play.

You know what I mean?

And the cricketers are like, well, we've been doing this for seven days already.

What, so still quite early on in the second test, as always.

And the baseball players are just like, so we got a couple hours in us and then we're burned out.

And that's kind of like, and then the cricketers are like, okay, well, you keep going, but we're actually pausing for tea because that's it's tea time now.

And then they leave to go play tea.

And then the baseball players are like, you're going to have to finish this shit because we have no fucking clue what we're doing.

And we can't tell who's who because you're all in white.

Yeah.

It's fair call.

Can't argue with any of that.

In other

pointless arguments,

I think this story about the St George's Cross on the England football shirt, and it's caused absolute fucking mayhem

in

the sort of list of overblown nothingnesses.

I think this

might be the most ridiculous confected squabble that we've had in some time, and that is a hotly contested title.

I mean, we once again find ourselves on the brink of total civil war, because actually, it was a passing breeze and a spot of light drizzle in an extremely small disposable teacup.

But still, this is basically a new front in the culture wars.

This shirt has been accused of being woke.

I don't know.

I don't quite know.

Andy, can I help?

Yeah, you can help, NATO.

Yeah.

Andy,

you know, being from San Francisco, the capital of homosexuality in the world,

are you familiar with the gay pride flag, the rainbow flag?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So do you know that there are different sub-flags for other identities?

Right, okay.

Yep.

Okay, and so that image right there is actually the bisexual pride flag.

Really?

It is, 100%.

Okay.

Right.

I mean, because I interpreted it slightly differently, as I thought, obviously, these things obviously mean a lot.

You know, these fashion companies don't just put things up for no fing reason

whatsoever.

They mean deep philosophical things.

So the purple, there, the two purple lines, they represent the fierce resistance of the ancient Trinovantes tribe,

who of course dressed in purple and smeared themselves in blackberries.

over the non-existent Visigoth invasion of 300 BC, which didn't actually happen, but they would have been really brave against it had it happened.

The off-pink,

yeah, that's sort of

something to do with the colour of the sunset

on the

right-hand one at the top.

The colour of the sunset on the day that Shakespeare wrote his smash-hit sonnet, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?

The original draft of which was, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?

Yes, all right, love you like a summer's day, in that I can't spend any time with you because the the cricket's on.

It's 142 for three.

Any chance of a cup of tea?

The three, the three vertical,

the vertical red bands, they're different shades of red stand for the various different things that have been made to stop by Brexit.

So I think that's entirely relevant as well.

And the purple, the other sort of dark, then we've got got the

blue.

There's two blues.

One is for St.

George, who was renowned for his fruity language.

In fact, he famously said, I'm going to f that fing drug and write the f up.

Who's it with me?

F italoo.

And off he went.

And the darker blue is famously the colour of Queen Victoria's favourite underwear.

So, I mean, Rhea, obviously it's hugely important that a tiny little bit of a shirt that you can't really see because it's on the back of people's necks should cause daily telegraph columnists to absolutely shit themselves to bilio.

I mean, there's so much controversy about this.

Like, as NATO said, it is very similar to the bisexual flag, which has upset people.

The bisexual flag is actually pink, purple, blue.

Of course, this was purple, like a light blue and a dark.

Like a very specific version of bisexuality, which we have here in the UK, which is men who f each other all the way through public school and university, but then settle down and marry women and have kids.

That's their flag.

That's our government you're talking about, Rhea.

Some respect.

Not for long.

It's caused a lot of conversation on the internet, of course, this flag.

People are saying, of course, that it's all these different shades, that it shouldn't be red, blues, purples.

Other people are saying, no, it's white and gold.

And it just depends.

Which way you look at it and which picture that you're looking at as to what you're seeing.

But fundamentally, again, and I'm really shocking myself this week, and I'm a bit worried about which way I'm going to end up voting in the election, because I actually do agree again with Sunak.

Both Sunak and Kier Starmer have come together, and I'm always saying we need to come together when there's a good idea or when something's going on.

We need to stop this bipartisan politics, we need to stop two-party politics.

Sunak and Starmer have both said, don't mess with it.

Just don't mess with it.

And I agree,

we're in such a time right now that we can't afford any more change, and we just can't afford to separate racism from football right now.

Andy, can I ask you a question?

Yeah.

So I really rely on this show to learn about the essence of Britishness.

All right, good.

And

could you explain to me what is more quintessentially British?

Defending an empty symbolic tradition for the sake of tradition

or making a bad decision and sticking to it even when it fails because you don't want to be seen as weak.

Oh.

But also,

English sports teams have not always

had the.

I mean, the 1966 World Cup winning football team, of course, famously won in shirts coloured the red of Soviet Russia.

No one complained about that then, do they?

The Ashes team that won in 1953 were wearing the all-white of surrender.

And David Wilkie won Olympic gold in the swimming pool in 1976 wearing just a pair of speedos.

Now, in what way is that respecting what St.

George did for this country?

You know, he obviously never came here, St.

George, and

he was from modern-day Turkey.

And I think it's just a bit of a shame that so many of our top patron saint positions are taken up by overseas saints.

I think his grandmother was born in Somerset or something.

That's how he

got the gig.

And it's just not really encouraging our young people to behave in a particularly saintly manner.

They just don't see the openings.

Right, let's go with hot cross buns news now.

Well, another completely pointless argument, and this is that Christian groups have been up in arms because

a supermarket,

Iceland, has been selling hot cross buns that instead of a cross have had a tick on it.

And apparently this is

in defiance of our Christian heritage that we should put

means of death on our snacks.

Which,

I think, in a way that, you know, putting a cross, I mean, that's.

I think maybe

would it have been better if Jesus had not been crucified, but had been tixified instead?

So that rather than the Christianity, the symbol being a cross, which is quite a negative thing, it was

a tick, which is right.

And how does that work?

Just

I can do this because I'm Jewish.

Are you tixifying yourself?

Yeah.

So, yeah, obviously, you can probably do both ankles with the same nail as well, actually, if you get.

Oh, I see what you're doing.

Okay, I see.

You see,

I wasn't sure.

All I could have picture is that, you know, tixifying involved a whole bunch of people going, just do it!

Which is what happened.

To be fair, he was guilty.

Don't judge him by today's legal and ethical standards.

According to the letter of the law at the time, he was guilty.

He knew what he was doing.

I'd nail the little f ⁇ up again if I had the chance.

He he cost us a lot of market share.

And um

if that routine is wrong, Lord, strike me down now.

I do realise that is a bit of a high-risk gambit in a building that was built under nineteenth-century fire regulations.

Now um

uh NATO, I don't I'm I I imagine America has been rocked to its core by this story of uh Britain abandoning its Christian heritage by putting a tick on a

hot cross bun.

It's been huge news in San Francisco.

Yeah, well, I mean, Andy, you know, speaking from one lapsed Jew to another,

obviously you and I both know that Christianity is the matrix reloaded of monotheism.

Of course.

So

hot cross bun sounds like an S and M sex thing, like, spank me with a cross and eat nutmeg out of my asshole.

He is risen.

I think that might be the first term that the phrase nutmeg out of my asshole

has been spoken in this room probably since Connie Francis did it.

It would make you think

of it.

It's a biggie question.

Is that a reason?

Family shock, family shock.

So the move

is opposed by an organization called Open Doors, which works with persecuted Christians around the world.

Persecute.

Siri, show me the whitest shit ever.

Are Christians persecuted?

Oh, my Siri just answered, actually, and said I don't have an answer for that.

So it raises questions for me.

Are Christians persecuted in England?

And is it a form of persecution to not be able to see a cross at all times?

Is that oppression?

Are Christians like Aquaman in that not touching water deprives them of their powers, but the water is a line-of-sight connection of a cross?

So the Evangelical Alliance said, Easter is when Christians across the globe remember Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave.

Whatever Iceland puts on their buns, Christians will continue to declare the truth.

of the cross that Jesus is alive.

Have fun with that, Christians.

I'll wait outside.

So, in the article, the researchers for Iceland said that Iceland's research found that a fifth of its customers would prefer to have a tick,

which also begs the questions: what other images did they test out?

The only one

that didn't

get to 20%, the one that would be really challenging is if they tried hot, literal depiction of the face of the Prophet Muhammad Bon's bacon sandwich.

Yeah,

I guess it'll be tricky.

A tricky sell.

Reform MP Lee Anderson said that it's this type of Nambi-Pamby virtue signaling that is leading to millions of people echoing Reform UK's call to get our country back.

He also thinks that the new football kit is virtue signaling.

Lee Anderson thinks that anything he doesn't like is virtue signaling.

Let's take our country back

where all our our food was disgusting before Brussels got involved and made us use spices and shit.

They actually cut off the Lee Anderson interview because he was complaining about it, just as NATO said, all of this virtue signaling.

And then they said, but the buns are only 30p.

And he went, oh no, I'm all right with that.

It's fine.

I love, actually,

he mentioned Henrietta Blythe, the chief executive of the charity Open Doors, which is, you know, who works with these persecuted Christians around the world.

And she said, the cross is still of huge significance to millions of people.

I'm not sure whose side she's on in this battle.

I don't know if she's fighting for the cross to go back on the bun or not, because then she said, I understand why people may not want to see a cross on their tea cake.

It represents one of the most agonizing forms of execution ever devised.

You could say it's like having an electric chair on a croissant.

Well, The first thing I thought was, that's not a bad way to toast it.

I mean, the croissants are not an ideal shape for putting pictures on, though, is it?

You have to quite a small Bendy electric chair.

I don't think she's thought that through, to be honest.

Well, maybe it's an IKEA electric chair and it's still flat-packed.

Right, it's quite possible.

But I don't know what form of execution would fit better on a Coisson than

a noose?

A noose?

What?

A guillotine.

What, but.

I know it's French.

That will fit on.

Look, I'm not disputing that the croissant and the guillotine are part of the same cultural continuum.

I'm just saying the guillotine would.

The guillotine would fit on a fucking baguette.

I mean, if we're going to get technical, the croissant's actually Austrian.

So we could put a tiny little assassin shooting at a count.

It wasn't a count.

Who was it?

Shit.

What was he?

What was he?

Archduke.

Archduke, thank you.

The tiny little assassin shooting at an archduke.

That's for the edit.

Right.

But to be fair, I mean, to get back to the story, obviously the

open doors, that's how Jesus escaped, I think, anyway.

But

the.

Took him three days, though.

Just pushing at the door.

But also, I mean, the whole cross.

It was supposed to be open.

Presumably, when he died on the cross and then rose two days later from the grave, he'd have been pretty peckish.

He'd have wanted someone with a bit of sugar and a bit of starch.

So the hot cross, hence the hot cross.

He probably didn't want to be reminded of the cross, though.

Is that why it's called a croissant?

Shouldn't it always have been on a croissant?

A cross.

A cross.

Right.

So were you saying Jesus was crucified on a croissant-shaped cross?

Let's get him back.

Just saying, that's a huge coincidence.

He did love his fruity buns, though, to be fair, Jesus.

Have you heard of.

Have you

heard of Jesus?

Oh, surprisingly, God, he used to be quite a big celeb.

Literally, no one had said they'd heard of Jesus.

For those who've not heard of him, prominent turner, the first millennium, Middle East-based magician and raconteur.

Again, a bit of a Jewish angle on the guy, but one of his lesser-known, he loves fruit-based buns.

One of his lesser-known miracles was turning a packet of supermarket raisins and a bucket of flour into the world's biggest ecclescake.

Do you know that?

It was 10 meters across, and then he jumped on it, levitated, and karate-chopped the Ecclescake into 5,000 regular-sized echo cakes for his adoring fans.

That's from the Gospel according to St.

Maurice, chapter 14, verse 12 to 21.

Fact, look, that's just how the Bible started.

I'm just bringing it up to date.

Right, so we'll move on to humans doing unhealthy things to ourselves news now.

Obviously, we are probably the greatest species in the world at damaging ourselves with all due respect to the lemmings who

put in an effort, but they don't have quite the range, I don't think, of ways of damaging ourselves that we have.

And this goes from large-scale things.

This week, we found the world's largest oil companies are reported to be way off track on their emissions goals.

Who is surprised by that?

Yes, there we go.

That's

you're a scientist, Rhea.

How are we going to fix this shit?

Well, honestly, I mean, I think the next few stories are going to tell us how we're naturally,

through a process of natural selection, going to fix this shit by doing such insanely stupid stuff to ourselves that we will eventually be our own demise.

What that problem solved.

Yeah.

I think that might be the most optimistic thing anyone's ever said on a bugle, actually.

So

NATO, I know you're a huge fan of multinational oil companies.

Famously.

Do you feel sorry for them that they've been told off in this way?

You know, Andy, I'm actually quite excited about this news.

Right.

Oil and carbon emissions.

Because after decades of lying to us about the science of climate change and buying their own research and lobbying against any and all regulation, it would have been disappointing if there was like a big at three personal transformation on behalf of the part on the part of the fossil fuel industry and they suddenly became virtuous after trying to kill everyone for 100 years.

You know what I mean?

Like,

imagine that the oil industry is Thanos in Avengers Infinity War, and he spends all of Infinity War trying to get the Infinity gauntlet to wipe out half of all life in the universe to create a universe of of abundance so that

people aren't fighting over scarce resources.

And then after three hours of fisticuffs with the Avengers, someone points out to Thanos that he could also use the Infinity Gauntlet to just double the amount of food

and solve the problem.

That's a very accessible way of putting it.

That would be

more virtuous, but such a shitty ending to the movie if he was like, you know what?

I was wrong.

Never mind.

Well, you mentioned the things that we are doing

to ourselves.

Vaping.

Vaping news now.

Is that a sting?

It's turned out that breathing in toxic fumes from untested substances into the very depths of your lungs.

See, I'm just a label.

I'd I'd always rashly assume that breathing these things were actually, you know, because they're fruit-flavoured, they're actually probably got quite a lot of vitamin C in and would

actually probably do wonders for your skin.

But apparently, I've been lied to by myself.

Oh, yeah, you know, the fruity bits are fine.

Okay.

Yeah, no, the fruity bits are fine.

It's the oil that you heat up and like emulsify and then shove into your lungs that your lungs are kind of like not what we're made for.

Give us a couple hundred, maybe thousand years to evolve, and maybe we will be able to.

But right now, it just blows my mind that I mean, I am a scientist, love science, love the whole process, like go science, love it.

But there's so many things that we do need to do with science, like, you know, find

find and then achieve alternatives to fossil fuels.

That I'm like, who's paying for someone to look up the friggin obvious and then write that up in a paper and then publish it?

And then we're all here giving them a pat on the back, going, well done, we weren't sure.

Like, I'm tired of that.

I'm tired of this kind of science.

Like, it was a no-brainer.

It was a no-brainer that that was not a good idea.

And now, now, but we've had to wait for someone to officially say it wasn't a good idea.

Well, I mean, my personal worry is that these generation of British children, if we suddenly start banning vapes, you know, we fought world wars for our right to breathe in bubblegum and cherry-cola-scented clouds.

You're beginning to sound like Liz Truss.

Yeah.

Liz Truss also is not happy with the smoking ban.

She thinks this, you know how we've banned smoking for anyone born after January 1st, 2009?

NATO?

Do you know this?

Here in the UK, if you're born after.

I've read about it, yeah.

If you're born after January 1st, 2009, you are not allowed to ever buy cigarettes in this country.

And Liz Trust has says that is an infringement on our freedoms and it is wrong.

But you use my bathroom

and you're in trouble.

So you're sounding like Liz now.

All right.

Well,

that is a bit of a free, to be honest.

Nato, I mean, what's the vaping as popular in California as it is over here?

Oh,

it's huge, and it's a great plan that

we created an $18 billion market

before we studied the health effects.

Who would have anticipated that fillating a glow stick might not be good for you?

But

as I understand the technical detail of the study, that it's not conclusive that vaping causes cancer, but it could rewrite your DNA.

So we've had decades now of comic books and sci-fi about bioengineering to create advanced humans and super soldiers and whatnot.

And instead, we're just creating new technology to alter human DNA to make it easier to get face cancer.

Take that, Gregor Mendel.

What a restaurant.

Gregor Mendel would have been thrilled

if someone had only explained to the 19th century Austrian monk what vaping and cancer and DNA mean, but he would be into it.

Then he might have thought twice about working with those pea plants.

Niche.

I mean, I guess

in other unhealthy shit news now, ultra-processed foods have also turned out to be not

entirely good for

the gut that evolved over tens of thousands of years, eating not ultra-processed foods.

So basically, the scientific researchers put eating a sausage and cornflake sandwich dipped in Coca-Cola is now on a level with most dangerous things to do in your lunch break, alongside head-butting a sleeping crocodile in a zoo,

practicing ballet on a homemade raft in a busy shipping lane,

and chainsaw wrestling.

So,

Amanisa, anything left that we can do now without damaging ourselves?

Do you know,

I welcome it all.

I welcome it.

I just think that there's 8 billion of us on the planet right now.

And if people need science before they'll realize that some of this is maybe not a good idea.

I'm sorry, I know, I'm being so, I know, because I know there's a lot of people in this room.

Okay, there's a lot of people in this room that vape, and they're just like, are you saying I should die?

No, I'm not.

Because especially if you came from smoking and you're using vaping to get away from smoking, fine.

Although, what this study has shown is that it's still going to warp your DNA, and your children are all going to have four feet and

three boobs.

But

I'm just saying.

Is that a problem?

I mean, the current advice if you want to eat healthy and avoid ultra-processed foods is that all food should be eaten directly from a tree or cow and swallowed whole like a python would swallow it.

So,

I mean, there's a danger, I think.

I mean, Nate, obviously, America is not entirely famed for its healthy eating habits.

Cheese in a can, cheese in a can, boom, boom, cheese in a can.

Yeah, I mean, that is,

is that the end of civilization?

Chedron, bacon, easy cheese.

Does it become kosher if it's in a can, NATO?

What's American flavor?

I don't think it's.

It tastes like gunpowder.

Woo!

Look, Rhea, you're a scientist.

I have a question.

Is the purpose of scientific research to help the reader find loopholes?

Because I read the study about ultra-processed foods, and my immediate thought is, I need definitions.

Define your terms.

You know what I mean?

Like, I read an article that men of my age shouldn't have more than four drinks per day, and so now I'm carefully measuring out 3.8 drinks per day.

And I'm writing the research team,

the scholars who wrote the study saying, define a drink.

Technically, a goblet of Navy strength drink gin is one drink.

You know what I mean?

So I look at the ultra-processed food study and it says, okay, fizzy drinks.

I don't really drink fizzy drinks.

Junk food, fine.

Sugar seals, fine.

Ready to eat meals.

I'm good.

How about what

what are

Carnitas super burritos

ultra-processed?

Do you have bostocks in England?

Do you know what that is?

It's the best food ever.

What is that?

What is that?

No.

A bow stock is like a brioche or a croissant dough that's been soaked in sugar syrup and then baked

with like a frangipan or a marzipan and maybe some fresh lavender leaves on it.

Really quite magnificent.

Basically, the study turns me into

a Talmudic scholar where I'm debating like what is the precise line between processed and ultra-processed?

Like how processed can I be before I'm too processed?

That's what I'm trying to figure out.

I think to make it easy for you, NATO,

I think it's a slightly more complex answer over here in the UK, but in America, I think the simple answer is given what you have available to you, you're fed.

Well, that was what we had to say in Leeds.

If you want to hear what we have to say in Edinburgh on the 28th of March and Salford on the 30th of March, well,

come to those shows.

If you live in London or indeed anywhere else in the world and are wanting to come to London in early June, we have a couple of dates at the Leicester Square Theatre on the 7th and 8th.

All details at thebuglepodcast.com where you can also join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme, give a one-off or occurring contribution to help keep this show free, flourishing and independent.

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.