Fighting Ceasefire With Ceasefire

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to this, the last bugle recording.

Until April,

the last recording without audience, because the next few weeks your bugles will be highlights from our live tour shows at which I expect to see all of you in person.

I am Andy Zoltzmann, humanity's last bulwark against the threat of oblivion.

Sorry, I'm reading the wrong script here.

I'm Andy Zaltzmann, 49-year-old with no practical skills.

My mistake.

I'm here in the shed of immutable truth once more.

Joined today from no fewer than four of the world's top four hemispheres, north, south, east, and west, by firstly joining us from Australia, where since she was last on the bugle, she has added to the sum total of human beings on Earth.

We'll find out how later.

Was it alchemy?

Was it turning hamsters into humans?

Was it bringing a robot to life, or was it something more traditional?

Stay tuned for the answer.

It's Alice Fraser.

Hello, Alice.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

How are you?

Very well.

And congratulations on bringing a new human into the universe again.

Thank you, Andy.

First of all, let's establish this quite fully and completely.

I absolutely should not be here.

I'm still in the middle of my self-appointed maternity leave, but I'm never going to turn down a bugler, especially one close to midnight, my time.

i'm i'm

i'm very well i'm in the midst of trying to parent my toddler through the arrival of her now three-week-old brother and also recover from the process of giving birth and also you know look after a newborn and boy are my arms tired um

from picking them all up i was going to say boy are my flapsaw but then i knew you'd say family tired family show

family show actually it's called a bloody show andy and it's when the mucus blood comes out of the surface never mind

Well, that goes without saying, which is why I didn't say it.

Well, anyway, congratulations.

Welcome to, well, I mean, basically, he's contributing to the bugle throughout this show.

And, you know, if he starts crying, that's really just a satire on the planet that humanity is bequeathing to him and his generation.

So it'll probably be the most incisive satire we've had on this show in the 16 and a half years we've been doing it.

Joining us from New York City, without a baby, it's Josh Gondelman.

Hello, Josh.

Hello, thank you.

Yeah, we're holding steady at the number of humans created or destroyed.

Because I think we also haven't created any humans, but I would like my household to be able to take credit for not destroying any humans lately.

That's all.

Congratulations, because you can't always assume that when you have an American guest on.

Bad when they told me I had to keep the numbers even and handed me the knife.

We are recording on Monday, the 26th of February, meaning that Thursday will be for the first time, literally in four years, the 29th of February.

And what an extraordinary day that is.

Got some 29th of February facts for you here.

In the UK, people born on the 29th of February are not allowed to vote until they're 72 years old.

And they cannot consent to carnal intergonadular beflauntery until they're 64.

The calendar at WONGS have added the leap day.

that the 29th of February is to the wrong years apparently.

It should have been added to alternate odd-numbered years.

No one knows why, but it's a fact.

The main reason that leap days were added in the years they're added, including this one, is as a means of adding an extra day of anticipation, preparation, and training before the Olympic Games, which take place in leap years.

The extra day is thought to take up to two hours from the average 50-kilometre walk time.

Yeah, I agree.

And there is also a long-standing tradition that the 29th of February is a day on which gender roles are reversed and women are allowed to do things traditionally ascribed to men.

These include proposing marriage, starting wars, wildly irresponsible gambling on the financial markets, genocide and institutional misogyny.

So no, it's lovely to be recording so close to the 29th of February.

Oh, I for one can't wait to buttonhole a man at a party and tell him about the job in which he is an expert.

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

This week, well, it's been London Fashion Week, so we have all the highlights from London Fashion Week.

The Bugle, of course, one of the official title sponsors, I believe.

Did we ever sign that deal, Chris?

I can't remember.

Anyway, let's assume we did.

Designer Darmoulian Mackerel has courted controversy yet again by sending his latest line of clothes out on the plastinated corpses of zoo animals, the highlight and or low light being a former rhinoceros in, frankly, alarmingly provocative nightwear attached to the front of a Zamboni nick from an ice rink.

Pondrella Quakes, AI designed underpants featuring storage options for a range of accessories from keys to penknife to sandwiches to camping equipment including stoves to golf clubs once again further the cause of practical fashion in London as did Barabella de Tomata's heli hat a high-tech wireless stovepipe with helicopter blades on top that promises the wearer flights of up to 12 meters up to four feet off the ground although for safety reasons the hat should not be used within 50 meters of any other human in terms of items that could soon be making their way into mainstream high street clothing stores near you look no further than the snack giant Tutiful's new jelly snake chainmail tabard, whilst fast-fashioned behemoth ephemeratized single-use, self-ripping, disintegrating jeans should sell big this summer.

And post-COVID, the played Doctor Shei look is still going strong.

With Trend of the End Times unveiling a new line of celebrity-endorsed beaks, look out in particular for legendary country legend Hankson Pettifeather's 10-gallon beak hat, as worn in his video for his recent chart topper.

I love you, darling, but my truck comes first at that section in the bin.

Andy, I'll tell you what.

I'm going to put my cards on the table.

I'm lightly hungover this morning and all those fashion non-words.

I was like, shit, I can't understand English anymore.

This is a problem.

Wait till we start talking about the cricket.

Too soon.

Too soon.

Top story this week.

The Middle East is still not fixed.

Disappointing for all those who had hoped that the Middle East would have been fixed by now,

and who were looking to the UK Parliament to lead the way, because chaos was unleashed in Westminster last week in what may go down as the most infantile parliamentary debate in the long and not especially proud history of democracy.

It's rather complicated to it.

We'll come to

some international angles on this later, but in Parliament last week, the Scottish National Party were having a special day as the official opposition

because they're the third largest party, and I think it's three times every parliamentary

season, essentially, they're allowed to pretend to be the actual opposition.

They put forward a bill calling for an immediate ceasefire.

The Labour Party proposed an amendment calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, and there was a separate government amendment calling for an immediate humanitarian pause.

Obviously, no one could agree on any of these things.

There's also a parliamentary convention, unwritten of course, because we're f ⁇ ing Britain, we don't write shit like that down, that says that if a motion has been put forward by an opposition party, it can't be amended by another opposition party.

The Speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, who is technically a Labour MP but is constitutionally obliged to be neutral, allowed Labour's

amendment breaking with parliamentary convention.

So there was a second amendment, as our American friends, Josh, know only too well, second amendments always end up causing complete and utter mayhem.

The result of this.

Sorry, just exercising mine over here.

The result, thanks to the unique blend of 18th-century unwritten rules, a deeply British refusal to talk things through openly, and the air conditioning in the House of Commons being set to pump out a juvenilising gas, just in case anyone was thinking about treating such a weighty issue with the seriousness it demands, was this.

The Conservatives withdrew their amendment, so they would take no further part in proceedings.

So, Labour's amendment went through without a real vote, just a classic House of Commons bleat.

And thus, the Scottish National Party motion was amended to Labour's wording without itself being voted on.

And everyone got very cross.

Somewhere in the background, a few thousand miles away, a war was still going on.

But that's not the most important thing.

The most important thing was that Britain's Parliament

just descended into

sub.

I mean, with all due respect to your baby, Alice, at three weeks old,

I think he probably could have come up with a more mature way of dealing with this issue.

I mean, did this resonate overseas?

Because the Palestinian ambassador to the UK described the day's proceedings in Parliament as being not a good day for the United Kingdom and not a good day for humanity.

So it kind of shows the level of childishness that was uncorked.

I mean, more than that, Andy, the Palestinian ambassador said the chaos in

Westminster was

British politics at its lowest.

And given Britain's habit of drawing random lines on a map that end up in generational intercultural blood feuds,

I think British politics at its lowest tends to involve marginally more cartography.

I think

the thing to remember here is a very complex issue, Andy, and there's ceasefires and ceasefires, and some of them involve ceasing more fire than others, and others involve involve more blamey languages and others are more pro-UK and

others are more anti-UK and if you think how a ceasefire in a foreign country could possibly be related to the character of the British public you clearly haven't met UK foreign policy

I don't know.

I keep being served gentle parenting suggestions in all of my social media platforms.

So I'd like to say to the combatants in this conflict is hands on your own body, body, hands on your own body.

We don't use violence to express our feelings.

Okay, let's take some time out and talk through these big feelings.

I can see you're having big feelings, it's safe to have big feelings, but we don't use violence to express our feelings.

So, I feel like that wording should be included in some of the official ceasefire request documentation.

Josh, a lot of it does seem to come down to the semantics of ceasefires, or is it ceases fire or ceases fires?

I mean, we could have a whole other parliamentary debate about that, I reckon.

And at the UN, America vetoed a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire and instead suggested a ceasefire.

So can you explain the difference between those two terms?

Yeah, so when there's a ceasefire, that's when there's a ceasing of fire.

And then a ceasefire is obviously when fire ceases.

And yeah, the United States vetoed, the only country to veto the call for the immediate ceasefire at the UN, right?

But to be fair, that was because it wasn't the ceasefire they'd proposed, right?

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's right.

Well, look, I don't know if it's because I'm American or if it's because I'm bald, but this hair splitting is too much.

We just shouldn't be splitting hairs like that.

You don't need them.

But if you can't cease me, I'm fired.

It's never a good thing when the United States is on its own on any policy.

I think that's like a pretty general statement, right?

We're still the only country that has Kid Rock and lemonade that makes you die.

And so we just shouldn't be allowed to freelance like this.

But

the U.S.

thinks that the Israeli military should stop its military offensive as soon as they run out of money we give them to buy more weapons from us.

I think that's the official American ceasefire position.

And in fairness, you know, a lot of people are saying that there's diplomacy going on behind the scenes.

And I think Joe Biden is using his firmest possible leverage, which appears to be looking

Netanyahu in the eyes and saying, cool it, Jack, in his sternest voice.

And so far that hasn't worked.

But yeah, maybe we could just try it for another four months and see if that bears any fruit.

The U.S.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said that

Israel, America, Qatar, and Egypt have come to an understanding on, quotes, the basic contours of a deal for a temporary ceasefire.

I mean, there's a strange old phrase.

There's many a slip between cup and lip.

And I think between the basic contours of a deal and something actually written down, binding language, there seems to be,

that's a long way to go.

Maybe a compromise can be reached.

And rather than it being a ceasefire, it's a lacuna, a hiatus, an institulated interruptus a discontinuous cessational intervilling a tea break interval but let's hope something happens um to and also this this idea of a humanitarian ceasefire being different from a ceasefire i mean most ceasefires are by their by their nature humanitarian or at least more humanitarian than not ceasing firing.

Netanyahu himself seems to be aiming for a cease pause where he stops pausing for anything.

So, yeah, I mean, it's hard.

It's hard to see a long-term solution to this without the erasure of all human history from recent atrocities all the way back to the dawn of time.

I mean, we all know that you can only fight ceasefire with ceasefire.

The worst part of this is how everybody has a very strong opinion, including, and I'm really sorry to break this to you, Andy, Prince William.

Prince William has come out and said, wouldn't it be nice if everyone were nice?

The fighting should end as quickly as possible.

And that is a rookie era, Prince William.

Don't start actually princing.

That's a terrible job for royalty in the modern world.

Your job at the moment, if we've all agreed, is to go bald gracefully, eventually look good on a currency.

Your job is not to make policy suggestions.

That is a quick route towards guillotining.

Just keep it to yourself.

Look,

this is my thing with Prince William, too, is

I don't know if I trust him to bring about an international treaty when he can't even strike an accord with his own brother and sister-in-law.

Get your own house in order, buddy.

You got to model that behavior.

Yeah, that is a fair call.

That is a fair call.

So basically, what you're saying is if Prince William and Prince Harry can reach a rapprochement, then world peace, eternal world peace, will break out.

I'm just saying then I'll listen to what he has to say about it.

I'm not saying it's going to happen.

But it was described as chaos in Parliament, and the House of Commons is more than accustomed to putting the bark into debacle.

And they certainly did bark at each other like the most idiotic dogs you've ever heard.

But chaos, it's the type of chaos that proved chaos theory.

The idea that if a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, it will inevitably spark a chain of events that leads directly to members of parliament in Westminster bickering in partisan self-interest and hiding their ongoing failures behind the smokescreen of parliamentary convention.

That's just the way the universe works.

Solution?

Kill all the butterflies in Brazil.

That's far easier than making Westminster grow up.

Other British incompetence news now and Trident, our celebrity New Key submarine, has had another disappointment.

There was a test of Trident in the Atlantic Ocean.

And rather than soaring into the skies to demonstrate the glorious British manner in which we could bring death, devastation and long-term long-term uninhabitability to the lands of our enemies, the test missile went, according to a source, plop into the sea a few meters away from the submarine.

That was the term used.

It went plop.

I mean, that's about as badly as a nuclear test launch can go.

Plop, really.

That's so far from kaboom

as to be almost

genuinely embarrassing for us as a nation.

Was the world laughing at Britain's ploppy missiles?

I mean, andy they always say it's uh it's not how far the missile goes it's the explosion in the ocean that counts uh and in this instance

there was none it's shameful and embarrassing once you've ruled the waves now andy all you can go do is is go plop into the waves which is very well much diminished as a nation i think there are worse things than worse uh outcomes than plop for a missile test i think right you want kaboom plop is bad but you don't want to hear whoops.

I think that's where there's real trouble, right?

It's rough.

This is tough because, like, can't hit the ocean with a missile sounds like a metaphor you'd use for saying someone has tragically bad aim, right?

Like a baseball player, like, that guy can't hit the ocean with a missile, Stu.

What do you think about that?

He's really got the yips.

Nut to quibble right at the gate, Trident, not an intimidating name for a nuclear missile.

First of all, even as a weapon, it's just for poking.

And here in the United States, our biggest association with Trident is sugar-free gum, which isn't even scary to teeth.

If I were the Navy, I think you can spin this, right?

I don't think you, I think you don't want

to let it sound like failure.

You want to use the erratic functionality of the missiles to work to your advantage, like a 90s action movie villain, just John Legiozamo going, I don't even know if this missile fires, but you don't want to test me.

I'm loco, bro.

I feel like that was the line from Spawn.

Just kind of a racially problematic dialogue.

I'm truly devastated by this, Andy.

It's the most disappointing news in British naval warfare since Sir Francis Drake turned out not to be a duck.

Well, also, I mean, it's 0 for 2 and its last two test firings, Trident.

The last one was eight years ago, also fell.

So now you really worry about the confidence of Britain's nuclear deterrent.

And how do you build it back up when it's had two such

public failures?

Is it going to just

when it comes to the big day and we actually have to use our nuclear deterrent, is it going to step up to the plate?

Or is it now broken and we we need to go back to just painting ourselves blue and trying to make people think it's colder in Britain than it actually is to deter them from coming, work with the Romans for a while.

Well,

after two fairly public humiliations, there's only one thing to do.

You've got to get the missile on dancing with the stars.

That's going to rehabilitate the image.

Just let it dance with Dua Lipa or Rita Aura

against them.

And it doesn't even have to win.

Just

give it a sympathetic face.

Even more worryingly, our defense secretary, Grant Schaps, those are four words that really should never have come in that sequence.

He insisted, trident remains effective.

And those words coming out of Grant Shaps' mouth are extremely worrying for a nation looking for some kind of reinsurance.

But also,

what I worry about with people saying things like this, that they're saying it's still going to work and, you know, this was just a test and saying it's still effective.

I worry that telling these nuclear missiles they're effective, even when they fail, is not the right way to go about it.

You don't give a nuke a special medal just for turning up and trying, telling them they're all winners, even if they fail their test.

We're turning them soft, I tell you.

They'll be eating avocados and changing pronouns before you can say Oppenheimer.

It's a disgrace.

More from my new Daily Telegraph column next week.

I mean, Trident remains effective is also the note that Poseidon writes in his diary the night after he picked her up.

Also, more worryingly, Trident had a seven-year refit, the submarine.

I'm not sure what that entails on a submarine.

More trendy interior decor, a slightly tweaked external look to make it less attractive to whales, possibly.

There have been a few incidents, not all whales, of course, just whales with a bit of a thing for what they perceive as robot whales.

A few unseemly incidents have occurred.

The rumor is that more than a few whale dicks have got a little bit too Moby in the vicinity of nuclear submarines.

Not judging them, not blaming them, it's just not ideal.

Trying only testing it every eight years doesn't really sound like they care if it works enough, right?

Like I'm thinking about the things I only try every eight years and that's yeah, like every eight years I try licorice and I'm like, nope, still nope.

To be fair though, Josh, you don't want it to be a regular occurrence that you're like, let's nuke the ocean.

You know, that I think you say for special conditions.

Every two leap years.

I mean

the thought thought occurs to me often and often.

Oh, let's up some whales, but I don't act on that thought.

Well, I think we should at least, if we're going to keep having failed nuclear missile tests,

every eight years we should rename leap years to plot years.

Bugle murder mystery section now.

Well, this is a new feature in the Bugle, a special murder mystery feature for you, buglers.

Can you decode the clues, unravel the subterfuge and solve the crime?

Just shout out your answer as soon as you think you know who did it.

Here we go.

The scene is Russia.

Oh, you got it already, did you?

Well done, yes, it was.

It was finely excluded.

This is a dark, dark, dark story.

The Kremlin Gremlin, of course, has been quite open in his online dating profile that his likes include warmongering, taking his shirt off on a horse and extrajudicial slayings of political opponents.

But the killing killing of

Alexei Navalny, a man of extraordinary courage, quirky humour, and robust defiance, has emphasized that Putin remains, how can I put this as generally as possible, a very hard man to warm to

as a character.

The Russians have insisted this is that he died of natural causes.

I mean, neither of you are qualified doctors, I think I'm right in saying, but

do you dispute that claim at all?

Sorry, Josh.

Well, it does feel like years of political dissidence in Russia.

Naturally, someone is going to murder you.

So like that is kind of the classic logic framing around that.

I think you're right, right?

People guessed Putin right away.

If there was

a game called Myrtle, which is like Wordle for who did murder to a Russian political dissident, your starter word every day would be five letters Putin, and it would always be green, green, green, green, green across the top.

And then you could sell it for millions of pounds.

Yeah, I feel like

natural causes in Russia do include suicide by political dissent.

It's like the classic ruling of Rasputin's death of old age.

Putin just keeps putting the wrong man into strong man.

It's so

depressing and so foreseeable.

And to be honest, I am surprised it hasn't happened, didn't happen earlier.

I don't know why it took this long, but it is being incredibly depressing.

Navalny's widow, Yulia, is vowing to continue his fight.

His mother is petitioning to get his body back.

It is so incredibly upsetting for a man who

was recklessly brave in the face of,

let's be honest, one of the cutiest cats that ever came in,

politically speaking.

Someday history books will say it that way.

I mean, it is, as you said, the world's most easily solvable who done it, because it's not really a whodone, it's more a who made it quite clear over several years who was going to do it and then eventually done it.

And

I guess Russian political Kludo is a strange guy, a huge board, lots of different possible weapons, but only one suspect.

And

looking at this from a sports fan's point of view, I'm starting to feel the inkling of a hint of suspicion that giving the Winter Olympics and the Men's Football World Cup to Russia has not proved quite the civilising influence on Putin that sports idealists had been hoping.

And that's very

maybe we just didn't give him enough sporting events.

If only we'd given him the World Bowl Championship, the master dart, the masterless darts, and golf, wouldn't even have been golf dodgy steel.

And what the heck?

Let's throw in Derbyshire versus Glamorgan from Crickets County Championship.

Perhaps then he might have been satiated, but it hasn't worked.

To be fair, the football had a good impact because he's gone, look, no hands

i speaking of sports i think it's so beautiful that navalny's widow yulia says she was going to keep fighting for a free russia in his memory i wish that i had a fight that noble for my wife to carry on in the event of my death which is not unlikely if i die not for murder i just i eat a lot of fried foods um if i die i just hope that my wife continues to cheer for the boston Celtics and to never go to that one restaurant in the neighborhood that always gets my order wrong.

And I know it probably isn't personal, but it feels personal.

Just write it down.

And that's all I'm leaving as a torch for my wife to bear.

One person who this might prove to be good news for is Joe Biden because

Biden called Putin a crazy puppy.

Sorry, a crazy son of a bitch.

I'm always getting those two terms mixed up.

Easy mistake to make.

And the Kremlin responded.

He actually said he called Putin a crazy SOB.

And the Kremlin said, a very chatty for a build in the Kremlin, by the way.

Not in a good way.

The Kremlin accused Biden of attempting to appear like, quotes, a Hollywood cowboy.

Now, Josh, is this not the biggest boost Biden has had in his re-election campaign, given that America has a bit of a track record for voting for Hollywood cowboys in presidential elections?

Yeah, this is huge.

I mean, like, Joe Biden's whole appeal is that you remember that maybe he he used to be a Hollywood cowboy, right?

He is kind of a Democrat who stands there vaguely evoking Ronald Reagan in terms of his disposition.

And that's what people, that's what people like about him.

He does have that, he does have that kind of charm.

Yeah.

So hopefully, I mean, look,

it's a tough election, but sure, we have the Hollywood cowboy versus the Hollywood

game show host.

And I think

what people prefer.

Well, on the the 70 of the US election Donald Trump, the future president and or inmate, has movingly compared himself with Alexei Navalny

despite still being alive.

He was talking about his raft of legal cases.

Raft doesn't seem quite appropriate.

400 metre long ocean liner stacked to the absolute gunnels with shipping containers full of legal cases.

That seems more appropriate.

But he's described it as a form of Navalny,

what he sees as his legal persecution.

It's a form of communism or fascism, covering a few bases there.

He might as well have got, it was so nonsensical to compare to Navalny, communism, or fascism.

He might as well have gone on and said it's a form of bench or watermelon or wrestling.

But anyway, he compared himself to Alexei Navalny.

Can you see any similarities at all between Trump and Navalny, either of you?

I'll take that as a no.

No, that's the correct answer.

Andy, Andy, there is nothing more telling than the silence of two comedians who are saying not only no, but no, so hard that we can't find a funny way to say no.

I think he was just quoting one of his favorite songs, which

if you allow me to sing a couple bars, when they say you're a thief, but you're commander-in-chief, that's Naval.

I think that makes truly as much sense as what he said.

It honestly sounds like a backup plan for if he loses in November, a Disney Plus show called That's So Navalme about a family of political dissidents learning to make it in the big city.

In

other exciting Trump news, Josh,

he's launched the new footwear range,

gold trainers for $400

called Never Surrender.

Trainers.

Have you tried them yet?

Have you bought a pair of Trump?

You know, I haven't been able to get my hands on a pair, and I'm a pretty big sneaker guy.

So I haven't heard great, you know, great things about them.

It is, Trump has a signature sneaker.

Or as I call them, the hopefully he'll never again fly on Air Force Wands.

I think he's a savvy marketer, right?

That's the one thing that Trump has an unimpeachable skill in, literally, is that he is a savvy marketer, and he sensed a void.

Now that Kanye West doesn't have a deal with Adidas, there was a hole in the Nazi sympathizer market sector.

And so he filled that hole.

He launched the shoe at SneakerCon in Philadelphia.

And these shoes, if you've seen them, are gold and have an American flag pattern on them.

And he figured that the people at Philadelphia SneakerCon would be into overrated gold-colored garbage just because of how psyched they are still about the Liberty Bell.

Take that, Philadelphia.

And I feel totally comfortable saying that because I was just in your city and have no plans to come there again soon.

The perfect time to talk shit about a place 50 miles away.

The UK has also responded strongly to the killing of Navalny and has put,

brace yourselves, buglers, travel sanctions on bosses of Russian prisons.

I mean, this is a brutal blow to the UK tourism industry, but you just have to do what's right.

regardless of the impact it has.

And estimates estimate that it could cost the British tourism industry up to zero pounds in lost income over the next decade.

The Bugle would also like to add to the wave of condemnation by banning Vladimir Putin from listening to this show or attending any of our live shows on our forthcoming UK tour.

Starting this coming Friday, the 1st of March in Glasgow, the third in Norwich, 9th in Cambridge, 10th in Birmingham, 16th in Warwick at the Warwick Arts Centre, 24th in Leeds, 28th in Edinburgh, and the 30th of March at the Lowry

in Salford.

Both Josh Josh and Alice will be joining me in Cambridge remotely

and on other dates of the tour.

We start in Glasgow with Josie Long and Anuvad Powell, then Norwich has Felicity Ward and Anuvad Powell.

Do come to all of those shows, details at the Bugle Podcast.

What are we talking about?

Oh, yes, a brutal assassination.

Sorry, I still haven't quite mastered

the best way to promote things.

Not travelling, travel news now.

And well, if the world is wearing you down, an opportunity has arisen for you to escape the world by pretending to escape the world.

NASA,

the celebrity American Space Agency, is seeking volunteers to take part in a year-long simulation of a mission to Mars.

The

simulated Mars mission will take place in a 3D printout, not of the whole of the planet Mars, but of a bit of Mars.

It's set to not take off next year.

And NASA is looking for four people to spend 12 months pretending to be Matt Damon, pretending to be a scientist in a 3D replica-printed Martian landscape.

Either of you going to apply?

Look, Andy, first of all, I couldn't possibly do it because I don't think they'd make a space suit small enough for my newborn baby.

Although

I would like occasionally to tell my toddler in space, no one can hear you scream.

But

I do try that.

I can't understand scream language,

which only works sporadically.

The point is, Andy, I feel like what this should be is either a reality TV show or a very expensive celebrity detox program, or possibly both.

What I want to see is beautiful people strung out on

withdrawal symptoms

pretending to eat dehydrated food packets in zero to gravity.

That's all I want.

That's all I want.

I just don't think this is such a good idea in general for a couple of reasons.

You can't just ask people to live on a fake planet, right?

If you want someone to live temporarily under completely dubious circumstances, you cast them on a season of The Bachelor or The Bachelorette.

And I think that's what we need to do here.

We just have it more mirroring the Bachelor franchise because we need to prepare ourselves as a species for Martians to tell us, I don't think you're here for the right reasons.

That's what they're going to say when we get there.

I honestly think, like, why even set up a fake Mars?

Like, the way things are going on Earth, NASA would have just as good a shot getting volunteers if they just asked for people who are like, f it, I've seen the way things are going.

Send me to actual space.

I know I could die.

That's the draw.

That's what I'm hoping for.

Well, of course, I mean, whenever there's space travel, so there are conspiracy theories.

You know, was Yura Gagarin actually

a dog in a human outfit?

Did Alan Shepard actually play golf on the moon, or was the sound recording of someone shouting, get in the hole, actually his crewmate and caddy, Edgar Mitchell, shouting at aliens to hide underground?

Otherwise, they'd give away what they'd actually found there.

So, of course, many people assume this is some kind of conspiracy and that it's not not actually a simulation in Texas.

It's actually going to take place on real Mars.

It's just very hard to know what the truth is anymore.

That's right.

This This could all be Stanley Kubrick faking this whole thing on a soundstage on Mars itself.

That part of this conspiracy is Stanley Kubrick is still alive.

The recruitment advert says candidates applying must enjoy fancy dress, red rocks, powdered food, not going for long walks, and being able to pretend to have gained a new perspective on life after being in space and seeing how small we are in the grand scheme of things.

So do apply if you fulfill those criteria.

Yeah, that's some classic astronaut bullshit.

Oh, we're so small in comparison to space.

Say that.

You've never been in the ocean or on a mountain?

You don't feel small all the time?

Must be nice, astronaut.

Not constantly thinking about your own insignificance.

No, also pretending to be surprised by being small in the face of the vastness of space.

You're a fing astronaut.

Surely you've studied this shit.

Yeah.

You're like, ah, you know, one thing they don't teach you in astronaut school is how big space is.

I thought it was going to be like a football stadium.

That's the size I was thinking about.

You can't understand it until you see it.

I've got a screen sover.

I can f and see what it looks like.

I've looked up.

It's all space.

Oh, I felt so small when I was on space.

Whatever, you loser.

You didn't feel infinite and powerful leaving Earth's atmosphere?

Like, so long, suckers, flipping double birds.

You felt small for the first time?

God, you fing chumps.

Astronauts.

Someone have to say it.

I'm going to blow your mind.

We're all in space right now.

That's right.

That's right.

We're the same size here as Yar in the Moon, dumbass.

I've even met bigger people than you that make you feel small.

That's how I feel after every pickup basketball game I've ever played.

Like, wow, I just thought I was going to do something.

I just felt so small by the end.

I didn't need to go to spice to feel small.

I just needed to do a Christmas gig at the Manchester Comedy Store.

Tell you how you can feel a lot smaller very quickly, Andy, is squeeze a 4.1 kilogram baby out of your stomach with no anesthetic.

I'll give it a go.

Thanks for the tip.

Dead owl news now.

Show some respect.

This is a very sad, sad story.

Flacco the owl.

Is it Flacco or Flacco?

Flacco the owl.

Not to be confused with Joe Flacco, the star quarterback, who by coincidence can also turn his head through almost 360 degrees and has a wingspan over 170 centimetres.

Flacco the Owl has sadly died.

The

Eurasian Eagle Owl...

Oh, Eurasia is it now?

We got out just in time before Brussels expanded to take in Pyongyang.

Anyway, the Eurasian Eagle Owl was busted to freedom early last year

after vandals vandalised, as Vandals often do, his cell at Central Park Zoo, enabling Flacco to escape from his 13-year confinement.

The famously flat-faced strigiform stunner has lived on his wits ever since, outsmarting the authorities and living as a renegade lone wolf but an owl ever since, feeding on rats, hot dogs, health shakes, superfood salads, and I assume occasional canishes from Yona Schimmel's Kinishery in Lower Eastside.

Until this week,

and Josh, I know this has rocked New York to its core, in a heroic attempt to to strike a blow for Mother Nature against the destructiveness of the Anthropocene era and the excesses of capitalism.

Flacco tried to smash a building to pieces with his owl beak and suffered a terminal de-alment.

It's a very sad story.

It's tough.

The people of New York are taking it hard.

And it honestly doesn't seem like Flacco's personality to fly face first into a building and die.

If this is the first time he's ever done it, people are suspicious.

they're suspecting that this bird death may involve some foul play.

And the only question is, who, who, who done it?

No.

No?

No, I'm saying yes, Alice.

I'm saying

yes.

Well, it's two to one yes on that joke.

I mean, I didn't like it, but I did say it, so that's a yes, folks.

It is Flacco, after his enclosure was vandalized last year,

fled the Central Park Zoo, as many New Yorkers do, flee their dwellings in a search for more square footage.

He's been on the loose, capturing the hearts and rats of the city.

And it's, I think there's something so beautiful about New Yorkers' grief.

People are saying, why are you sad about an owl when there's so much human misery and death in the world?

And I just think there's a purity to this grief because no one is posting pictures on Instagram of the one time they met Flacco the owl that the owl probably doesn't even remember just being like, Flacco, you meant so much to me.

You taught me how to be weird, et cetera, et cetera.

And I think that's beautiful.

Finally, a celebrity death that people can't make about themselves because they've never met an owl.

Wait one minute, because there's an artist here in this ABC News article that I'm reading

who says that he says the bird gave him artistic inspiration and he found parallels between his and Flacco's plights to survive in a new world.

The quote here is he says, for me, it's more the story of an immigrant or someone not from the city and then he flies free and finds his instincts to trust himself and survive.

He said that people doubted Flacco's ability to survive in the big city, a city that is,

from all reports, full of garbage and rats.

Two of Owl's favourite things.

But that's it, right?

When you hear this guy trying to make it about himself with an owl, that's like you're like bullshit.

But if he said that about David Bowie, you'd be like, oh yeah, that's kind of sweet.

You're like, it's all bullshit.

But it's quite impressive that Flacco managed to escape recapture for over a year.

He almost blew his cover when appearing as a guest pundit on a network news channel.

Suspicions arising when he provided an unusually balanced and lucid analysis of American politics, prompting internet sleuths to suspect that he was not an American human.

So it's quite impressive that he lasted this long.

And I mean, his death does bring into focus

a big issue in the States that officials estimate that up to a billion birds every year die flying into buildings.

And there's a huge imbalance there between humans and birds because nowhere near a billion humans die, for example, trying to twist their necks 360 degrees or live nocturnally up a tree.

So, you know, it's all weighted

or poop out their mouths.

It's weighted against the owls, sadly.

As a response to this death event of Flacco the Owl, Mayor Eric Adams has touchingly allocated $200 million for the NYPD budget, so this doesn't happen again.

So I think that's really special.

It took it away from libraries and public schools.

But

I think that's finally that no owl will ever die in New York City is what Eric Adams said in a manner

that was alleged to be cocaine.

Not that the mayor is on cocaine, just that he says the kind of things that you would say if you were.

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

Sorry to end on such a sad,

tragic story about

Flacco the Owl.

And,

you know, just if you do see an escaped owl from a zoo, please send it our sincerest condolences and

support for the escaped Alcanus.

If you are devastated about the death of Flacco, if you are really sad about it, remember his legs are way longer and more scary than you think they are.

Yeah,

he's creepier than you think, people.

As I mentioned earlier on, don't forget to come to the Bugle Live tour shows starting this Friday in Glasgow.

Alice, do you have anything to plug other than your

new baby's mouth every now and again?

We have special gargles that are still coming out every week.

We've pre-recorded a bunch.

My Patreon is still running.

I still do weekly writers' meetings at the moment with guest hosts.

So go over to patreon.com/slash AliceFraser to support

my work generally and my maternity league specifically.

You can also get all of my stand-up specials there for free.

So if that's a thing that you want to do, if you're like, oh, I'd like one of Alice's many stand-up specials, you can, instead of paying money for them, you can pay less money for them.

Good deal.

I just watched the two new ones a couple of weeks ago, and they're so wonderful.

I was so thrilled that I was finally able to get them on my computer.

I like really love them.

It was a wonderful time.

I think people should do it.

Josh, you want to plug anything of your own as well?

I'm not on maternity leave, but I am generally unsuccessful.

So

I'll make it quick.

Every Monday, I put out a new newsletter via email called That's Marvelous, joshgondolman.substack.com.

I'm on the road a bunch leading up to my new special taping.

So this weekend, the first and second of March, I will be in St.

Paul, Minnesota.

And then coming up, I'm just going to run through them at the end of this month, Bloomington, Indiana, then New Orleans, then

San Francisco, Seattle, Portland.

Burlington, Vermont.

So I'm all over the place.

I would love to see you out on the road.

It's so nice when buglers come and visit.

I've got some new stand-up up on my social medias at Josh Gondelman.

JoshGondelman.com for all the tour dates and ticket info.

I did make jokes earlier, but I am obviously a fan of making it all about as a subjective human.

I think that is what we all do, and that's okay.

And I just did it.

So, there you go, Buglers.

Thank you very much for listening.

Don't forget, if you want to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme to give a one-off or a current contribution to keep the show free, flourishing, and independent, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

And subscribers will receive exclusive access to the monthly Ask Andy Show.

The latest edition has just gone live for our subscribers, the show in which I answer answer a selected number of all of your questions.

See you at the tour dates.

The next few weeks will be highlights of Bugle Live shows.

Do enjoy those and

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.