Contests, Conflicts and The Zaltzprime

The Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4286 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world with me Andy Zoltzmann and where else to start than by saying Happy New Year.

This is the first bugle of the year, yet another year beginning with two, getting a bit dull now, but the first even-numbered year for just over a year.

So at least that freshens things up a bit.

Yes, it is indeed 2024, which of course is short for 2020.

For f's sake, we're nearly a quarter of a way through the century already.

And even more for f is sake, it's the year I'm going to turn 50.

Oh, fuck.

Chris, can you just fade down the internal monologue channel, please?

For everyone's sake, joining me on this first bugle of 2024 to hopefully slow down the passage of time with the soothing balm of bullshits.

I'm delighted to welcome firstly the two humans who are currently Alice Fraser.

Welcome back, Alice.

Happy New Year.

Happy birthday

as well.

It was your birthday, a couple of days ago, as

we record.

How are you?

How is your two days ago as the crow flies through time

was my birthday.

I'm currently buffering at 92%, as they say, in the pregnancy game.

They don't say that.

In theory, I have three weeks to go.

But from the amount of aggression that this small person is showing, I feel he's ready to make his entrance at any minute.

If I if I step off a curb wrong,

we're in for it.

I think

actually neither of our children made it to the full hundred percent uh pregnancy mark.

But

yeah, you know, only ninety two, solid effort.

Um

well, also my toddler has a habit of headbit in the stomach, which I feel is like

that's that's the sort of the evolutionary desire to mark out territory, I guess.

You know, we you can't That's millions of years in the making.

Joining us from India, it's Anuvabh Pal.

Happy New Year, Anuvabh.

How's 2024 going for India so far?

Very well, Andy, very well.

I am in the city of Calcutta, bringing in the new year with family, and

the AQI in Calcutta

is about the same as storms raging on the planet Jupiter.

So that's air quality index, correct?

That is absolutely correct.

Right.

And whatever's going on with Alice is going on in my lungs right now.

As far as I know, I'm not carrying a child, but I don't know.

Right.

But it's possible that pollution could be so dense that it sort of coalesces in your lungs into some form of primitive life form.

That then, I mean, this was like the start of

you work in film and have.

Yes.

If this sci-fi film is not made by the end of the year i will consider you personally to have failed so uh get it get it made this is this is you know this is going to be a three-part film uh

called

something undid

this is the first bugle of the year as i said 2024 to be precise a year that is uh predicted by experts to be the joint longest longest of the decade so far.

And if the Boffins and Calendar Villa are right, it's a good bet to finish the decade in top spot alongside early pace setter 2020 and pre-decade joint favourite 2028.

Historically, it seems barely the blink of an eye ago that we were all toasting the advent of a new millennium, but yes, that is already 1024 years ago, and so much has happened in the meantime, as evidenced by the fact that you are listening to me talking about it rather than watching me stitch it into cloth.

The 9th of January, the day we're recording, that's today, as I speak, probably yesterday or a few days ago or months or even years, decades ago as you listen.

9th of January is apparently Play God Day.

Have you come across this before, either of you?

Well, I mean, we've got 331 million gods, Andy.

If one got into that game, I don't think I'd have any income.

Yeah, you're apparently it's Play God Day.

You're supposed to act like you are God,

and so I assume that I'll just spend the rest of the day after this bugle recording doing absolutely sodd all to deal with all the problems I've caused over the years, failing to say anything to clarify the not entirely clear things I've said in the past, not catching up on long overdue admin, not correcting all the people who deliberately misinterpret my words, and generally lounging around to no good purpose.

So basically, just your average Zaltzmann day.

I mean, I'm always playing God, Andy.

I'm creating life.

Tomorrow's the 10th of January, at which point it will be a happy birthday to my elder child, who was born on the anniversary of Enlightenment superstar and Christianity skepticism celeb Thomas Paine publishing his smash hit pamphlet, Common Sense, back in 1776.

And just a couple of weeks ago, at the end of 2023, Common Sense was voted most ignored historical advice of the year yet again.

I I think that is now about 140 years in a row it's taken that title.

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

And this week, as I said, it's a leap year this year.

So we have a special section explaining leap years, answering some of the questions you all have about leap years, including why are there leap years?

Answer, no one knows, but they kind of work.

The most commonly accepted explanation is either that Jesus accidentally miracled an extra day into February when he was doing a Messiah training holiday camp as a teenager, or that the ancient Greeks just chucked an extra day into every four-year Olympic cycle to do bag searches on all the spectators entering the stadium at Olympia.

Why are leap years called leap years?

Well, that's because jumping used to be illegal under the theocratic regimes of the late

first millennium, apart from on one extra day every four years when everyone was forced to jump up and down for the whole day to try to waken up the soil so plants would grow more enthusiastically over the next four years.

Another Brexit, sorry, another leap year fact: Brexit, Britain is set to abandon the leap year.

Instead, we're going to introduce our own Brit-tastic super day, the Brexieth of Brexit,

which will be a special 60-hour super day once a decade, rather than having two and a half leap years per decade on average, where everything will be legal as long as you're wearing Union Juck underpants on your head.

And a couple of final

leap year facts.

Paleocalendrologists have calculated that the first leap year was in about 4.5 billion BC.

And legend has it that if you hold your breath for the entirety of a leap year, you either become a mortal or you die.

Also, as it's new year, first bugle of the year in the bin this week, we have a new year, new you section, how to care for your brand new yew tree that your punadicted friend bought you as a new year's gift, including tips on how to stop the roots going down too deep and annoying the people who live in the flat below you.

We'll deal with the

sheep next week, then in subsequent episodes, the ancient Chinese reeded wind instrument, the river in Guangxi province diverted to run through your home,

the slightly confused and understandably agitated 59-year-old Japanese TV personality, actor, writer, and former model, and the large suitcase full of contraband uranium.

That New Year New Year section also in the bin.

Oh, it's good to be back.

Top story this week, 2024 has begun.

Yes, as I said, another new year.

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.

And this week on the Bugle, we look at some of the defining contests that are going to shape this year of contests.

And 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.

Are you both excited at the prospect of, well, what, 10 months now of

pure, unadulterated,

inescapable Trumpian horror?

I mean, Andy, this is wild.

The Supreme Court has said that they're going to take up the appeal that Mr.

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

The Supreme Court has said they'll hear it.

Look,

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

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

It's extraordinary.

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.

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.

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 bride.

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

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

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.

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

Rules are rules.

So,

it's

also, as you said, the hang on, let me uh

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

year

Which disqualified Trump from the ballot for being an insurrectionist and the Supreme Court ruling will apply nationwide so Trump's presence on the ballot paper is up to the Supreme Court 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 fing idiot, essentially.

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

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

Is that does it get the same level of coverage in uh in the Indian news media?

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.

Um

and that we can really identify with because some ministers have had to face that situation.

There were 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.

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,

and letting things be fluid.

And also,

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

I often turn to Napoleon

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.

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.

So

those things really help.

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 a fair fight, but it's a bit of a help.

Yeah, I mean, this whole election campaign of Trump versus American democracy, it's essentially a major sub-conflict in the ongoing bout between America and its most lasting, hated, and remorseless opponent,

the USA.

And Trump, obviously, the bloviating fuckpigs, bloviating fuckpig, 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 anivab a maximum security penitentiary or both or a specially configured maximum security white house that can double up as as both.

I mean,

these are frankly bizarre times.

American democracy has never quite been the beacon of freedom, freedom, justice, choice, and hope that it has liked to crack itself up as.

This it has in common with, for example, all other democracies ever since the ancient Athenians first thought to themselves, oh shit, we've fked this right up, guys, with considerable emphasis on the word guys, despite which it took another 2,300 odd years before democracy took a radical punt on allowing women to help out with the voting schemazzo.

But at the moment, Trump Biden II is looming over the Democratic year like Freddy Krueger over a toddler's playpen.

It's it's it's

I find it hard to sort of look ahead at this year without a feeling of dread.

Not necessarily that Trump is going to win, but at

just

that the deluge of Trump-based news that we will have to deal with on this show, frankly.

So what it does say, American democracy is,

and you know, saying this from Britain, you know, I realize that

these are thin, icy legs we are standing on, if I may mix various metaphors.

American democracy is in an advanced and seemingly incurable state of self-inflicted necrosis.

To the extent that if the Abraham Lincoln sandwiching tramvirate of presidential uselessness that was Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson were to be halked back from the dead in the form of a three-headed warthog to run on a presidential ticket alongside a shipping container full of rotting Donica Babmeet as vice presidents, I think a lot of Americans would think

Yeah, maybe this is a better option.

That that is the state where I mean rumors are just reaching us that the Statue of Liberty is considering quitting and accepting a big money offer to join the new Saudi Arabian Sculpture League, whilst the Lincoln Memorial,

if Trump wins in November, is set to be reconfigured to show the 1865 assassine of the year, not sitting contemplatively on an armchair, but kneeling over a toilet seat, vomiting uncontrollably.

So that is where we are.

Good luck, America.

We will have full, exclusive coverage of the

American election.

Sorry, I'm going to do that again.

We will have full, exclusive coverage of the American election process through the year as we try to retain

a microscopic trace of optimism that democracy is not dead.

I mean, Andy, look, the Democratic National Party are desperately looking for a 50-year-old.

So, and you're looking for a bit of a change.

So,

if it's not the marriage, would you consider the American presidency as an alternative?

Right.

To be honest,

I'm not really

a big fan of, well, divorce

at the moment in my life, partly because I like my wife

and I hate admin.

So, there's two reasons for...

for not getting divorced.

So,

running for the American presidency, I think, would be less hassle.

Andy, I'm not saying you need to get divorced.

I'm saying your cohort are getting divorced.

You can cut out the middleman, stay married and just get a mattress on the floor somewhere to

express your need to feel young again.

And

I have, you know, the private life thing is between you and Alice.

I've been recruited by the Democratic National Party to ask anyone who is under the age of 82 if they'd like to run.

And you're the first person I've spoken to in weeks.

So I was just thinking.

Okay.

All right.

I wasn't I don't think I was technically born in the USA my mother was born in the USA I don't know if I can sneak that in

sneak in or I feel like

what's happening now in American politics with these two rather elderly representatives is a macrocosm of what's happening in pop culture which is that you can't make references anymore because pop culture is increasingly siloed into little algorithmic things so if you want to get a universal reference you have to go back to the 90s And I think that's what's happening here with the politicians.

Because anyone who's younger than about 65, you go, who?

Yeah, I mean, it is, I think I mentioned this before on the bugle that

Bill Clinton is still the second most recently born American president, and he was last president a f of a long time ago.

I think an American president can come from Tunbridge Wells.

I don't think there's any law about that.

I think there is, actually.

But, you know, I mean, laws, as we've discovered...

Yeah, otherwise we'd have had Arnie four times already.

We've discovered that laws are often more malleable than the lawyers make us make us lawyers.

If you've got Bitcoin, Andy, I know someone who does great fake ID.

British conflict news now.

Well,

the big conflict in Britain this year, in this year of conflicts that we talked about, is the Conservatives versus their own record as Conservatives since 2010.

They've been in power since David Cameron

squeak hoodwinked his way into power in coalition in 2010, 13 and a half years ago.

And this week, a Conservative MP, Danny Kruger,

said that the Conservatives are going to leave the country when,

assuming that they lose the election that is scheduled almost certainly for this year, sadder, less united, and less conservative than they'd found it in 2010 and that they face electoral obliteration.

So sadder, less united, less conservative.

Was that a radio head lyric?

I forget.

It's been a while since that.

But we are set for an election almost certainly this year.

We don't have the same fixed election schedule as America and various other countries.

We prefer to leave it up to the sitting prime minister and their government to just decide when to put their head into the democratic crocodile's mouth.

So it can be any point up to five years since the last election with, I think, even a bit of leeway at the end of that.

So it could technically be in January 2025, the election.

But

people seem to think that it's most likely to be either October

to give the government more time to make Labour's job even more impossible when they take over, or May, because elections have tended to be in May or any other time.

That's a way we're it's basically jazz, essentially, calling calling an election in Britain.

It's more about when you don't call it than when you do.

Well, we're getting to watch the edifying spectacle of all the Conservatives turning on each other.

It's the ultimate own goal to be betrayed by your own party, except instead of a football-owned goal, it's a pigeon shooting-owned goal, and the pigeon is your penis.

Just watching them all figure out how to talk themselves down, desperately trying to position themselves on the spectrum of political commentary for their jobs after they've been fired.

You know,

the spectrum of political commentary for ex-conservative politicians goes from respectable centrist hypocrite to full froth farmer, pandering to the most manipulable of angry online bigots, the people who put the UG into suggestible.

And I, for one, look forward to seeing how that all shakes out.

Well, you know,

there's a lesson here from an Indian state election.

But there was a particular Indian state election in the 1980s where the chief minister kept postponing the election till his son grew up so he could inherit the position.

So again, there's a lot of room to learn from mature democracies.

And also, I read somewhere, Andy, that there was a conservative politician, the one you mentioned, said that Britain is sadder, less united, and less conservative now than when the conservatives inherited

the government.

And I'm just, I've been away from Britain since November, so I just want to know, are these all bad things?

Well, I mean, I think, to be honest, looking at the way that the Conservatives have governed, two of them were core targets

for the government, sadder and less united.

I mean, that's essentially what Brexit

was all about.

Less conservative, I'm not sure they necessarily wanted to go down that route.

Essentially, we're now angrier, more divided, and more self-destructive, I think, is how we are as a nation.

So

as a result of this, it's quite hard to see what cards Rishi Sunak can play in his efforts to slightly elongate his time in office.

He did warn this week that Britain,

if it does vote for Labour, as seems

almost inevitable, that Britain would go back to square one.

And, well, frankly, looking at how things are going on whatever square on now, square one sounds almost deliriously utopian.

Just flatten everything, start with a nice brand new hinge and take it from there.

See if we can f it up less badly this time around.

When you're on square 62, the vortex of everlasting despair square, which automatically loses you the game and features a snake all the way off the board into some kind of

threshing machine, square one is an attractive option.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like in the Tori playing board, all the other squares are ladders that lead to snakes.

Most of them

based in Qatar hedge funds.

Actually most of most of the snakes are just backbench Tory MPs waiting to submit their letters of no confidence.

Anyway, it's gonna be it's a wonderful year for democracy fans.

It's gonna show democracy at its sparkling, sparkling best.

We will also have full exclusive coverage of the

UK general election whenever that happens in the next 12 months.

Nowhere else, no other media outlet

will be reporting on it.

Animabh, you brought our attention to

another election story that's happening

in Bangladesh.

Just round the corner from where you are in Kolkata.

Correct.

Look, I'm always fascinated by elections elections where the opposition parties are on the run.

Britain goes to the polls this year, the United States goes to the polls this year, India goes to the polls this year.

You know, and a lot of examples.

It isn't, there isn't really an opposition, everything's in chaos.

That's my favorite time.

So, this week, Bangladesh is having its general elections.

I've been fascinated by this.

The opposition leader, his name is Abdul Mohin Khan, and he's been in hideouts, hiding from home to home.

Because apparently he's going to be arrested.

There's a crackdown, and

basically, Sheikh Hasina, who's run the country for three terms, about to be elected unopposed for a fourth term.

She's made sure she's elected unopposed by making sure loads of people who might be running or against her are arrested.

Before this guy going into hiding, the Nobel Prize winner Mohammad Yunus,

who started the microfinancing bank, Grameen Bank, 83 years old, He was arrested for some financial fraud.

And he said, this is not a good way to have elections by putting everyone in jail.

I mean, it is a different interpretation of a healthy democracy if your opposition leaders are having to work on their fleeing-based cardio.

Again, you know, this is something Trump could consider.

Now, one thing that's fascinated me about Bangladesh in the last 10 years is that it's become an export powerhouse.

You know, I grew up in the 1980s.

Bangladesh was associated with floods and George Harrison.

No longer, it's for a long time was a booming economy, and most of the clothes they make goes to the United States.

And America has been very concerned about these flailing elections.

And they've taken a very interesting approach.

They've said, you know, Bangladesh, we're not happy with the way you're conducting these elections.

But rather than Americans doing a show of strength or putting a puppet regime or sanctions, they're trying to influence foreign elections by buying less Lululemon yoga pants, which is

an odd approach to controlling the Bangladeshi democracy.

But let's see if it works.

Let's see.

I mean, given how thin Lululemon yoga pants are, I don't think you can get less Lululemon yoga pants.

I think at that point, it's just invisible pants.

This is what the Bangladeshi election is missing.

An outside observer in the form of Alice Fraser.

This is something the United Nations really needs.

I think all elections need that, to be honest.

Well another one of the key contests of the year once again is humanity versus technology

and increasingly this is a contest that has been going only one way and really we're just looking for the odd consolation goal at this point.

We might as well just accept that we've lost.

Alice, I mean already this year we've had a few exciting exciting developments in the humanity versus technology battle,

including something we'll come on to shortly, the smart B-Day.

And I'm just going to leave that phrase hanging, buglers, be able to just cogitate on subconsciously whilst we cover

another story that also makes you question what the fuck we're doing with our millennium planet and species.

And this is that the CEO of a hedge fund, it turns out, might not actually have existed.

It was a crypto hedge fund.

And it turns out

that

the boss might be entirely fictional.

Alice, as always, you

are keeping your finger on the pulse of crypto insanity.

Tell us what

brings us up to date with this story.

So, for context, Andy, in 2022, the cryptocurrency hedge fund Hyperverse collapsed.

It suspended withdrawals.

It was accused of operating as a pyramid scheme.

According to blockchain analysts, the losses were estimated to exceed $1.3 billion.

Thousands of consumers lost millions of dollars.

And Stephen Rhys-Lewis, who was the chief executive officer, is obviously the person most accountable.

But it's starting to seem like he might not exist.

And

not only like he fled to Montenegro and changed his name, more like he never existed.

His CV is completely made up.

None of the places he ever claimed to work or study have any record of his existence.

And they just decided they were going to make up a CEO for this company.

It is a genius way to avoid criminal liability.

The ultimate heist, you can't catch me, I was never real.

Much like

so many of the cryptocurrency products that this hedge fund managed, it only really existed if you believed in it.

And it's taken basically up until now to confirm that this man who never existed, who helmed a failed company,

was in fact as fake as he thinked.

And part of that was that the person who first broke the news was a journalist for a tabloid newspaper for The Mirror.

Andrew Penman

wrote about it because he found out that the people who had endorsed this chap,

Stephen Rhys-Lewis, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak

and a couple of other celebrities,

may have had their endorsements purchased on cameo.

Alice, Andy, I have a quick question.

I know that there's an issue with CEO not existing, but on the other side of it, a currency that does not exist, should it not have a CEO that does not exist?

Isn't there a synergy here?

There is.

There is an internal

logic to this.

One of the celebrities

was alongside Steve Wasnet, Chuck Norris, apparently.

I mean, that's an interesting combination for a start.

But again, I mean, maybe this is, you know, because technology keeps showing us glimpses of a future that is really as dystopian or utopian as we choose to make it.

We talked about the American election earlier on.

Would an entirely made-up president not be vastly preferable for America in 2024?

I think

this to me, Alice, is a good news story.

Also, I mean, I've some experience of the benefits of people who don't exist.

Many, many years ago, when I was a student, I used to

edited and

wrote most of the sports pages of one of the student newspapers.

And not all of my articles were 100% fact-based.

It may not surprise you to find out.

And

generally, the editors let me get on with it because I was very good at page layout and everything was scrupulously proof-read, even if the contents were total bullshit.

They were correctly spelt, punctuated, and nicely laid out.

So they let me get on with it.

I had my own little sort of of fiefdom on the two pages of sport a week.

But one week, one of the editors said, I'm afraid we can't print this article because it's libelous.

Well, it can't be libelous because no one in the article exists.

So there we go.

I have a quick question about this, Andy.

The games and sports you were writing about, did they take place or did you make up the games as well?

Well, some of them did.

And

some of them would then embellish the reports.

Going on the the principle that frankly no one really cared that much about the

inter-college hockey tournament or whatever.

I had a few complaints from some of the people involved, but mostly people seemed to like it.

But I did also, there were also other

events.

And in fact, in Bugles Pass, we had a few reports from our marginal sports correspondent, Wole, which actually began my days on the

student sports page.

So there we go.

Anyway, that is literally a millennium ago.

Let's move on now.

I think we've all had a few minutes now to think about it.

The two words, smart b-day.

And if two words combined sum up where we are as a species, particularly commercially, I think Smart B-Day is it.

It is the year 2024, so of course, you can now buy a $1,300 Smart B-Day.

If this surprises you, you have not been paying attention to the planet for the last 250 years.

This to me is the logical end point of the industrial revolution there is nowhere else to go from here when those mechanical pioneers and engineering visionaries started revolutionizing what was possible with machinery and technology in the 18th century surely this is what they dreamed of a voice-activated arse blaster with variable spray intensities heated seat automated night lighting and i assume the capability of suppositorizing podcasts directly into your buttocular cavity so you can assume all the spiritual nutrients from the show without even having to listen to it.

This,

the future is already here.

There's another example of when the future is already here.

I went on holiday

with the family to

southern Spain for a week over New Year, and it was absolutely delightful.

The highlight, however, is all the architectural wonders and wonderful food and fascinating history, was

a couple of machines.

There was this little sort of 24-hour day outlet,

and it was just a couple of vending machines and one of the vending machines

one of the vending machines

basically 24 hour day burger and kebab vending machine where for three euros you could get from a machine a donna kebab a hot dog or a burger i'm sure i don't know if there's any vegetarian or vegan options but you could definitely get a three euro dona kebab

And I thought, well, this is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

So I took a photo of it.

And then I noticed that next to it was another vending machine selling sex toys.

So 24 hours a day in Seville, you can go and get yourself a Donica Babb and a double-ended dildo.

And

where can human civilization go from here?

This is...

Capitalism has no more cards to play.

It's done.

It's achieved everything it needed to achieve.

Here's some loose change.

Choose how you'll ruin your night.

I mean, you know, the great Moorish empires were not built up of nothing.

You know, they fought through everything.

This was literally yards from the Alcazar in Seville, one of the great architectural wonders of Europe.

An extraordinary building that showed the limits of human creativity.

But even that paled into insignificance next to this tiny little

Andy, whether you choose the kebab or the double-ended dildo, you are going to need a smart bean.

Exactly.

Family show.

Family show.

So that is the end of the first bugle of 2024, a year that will see history being made, as indeed all years do, of course.

But this year, the best kind of history.

Bugle history, because in just a couple of months, the number of full bugle episodes since we relaunched in the post-John Oliver era in 2016 will pass the number from the pre-everyone who isn't John Oliver era and then sometime later in the year just or after the middle of the year we will hit the 600 full episodes mark which by my which by my reckoning will also be around the four million words of pure unadulterated bugle wisdom insight and life guidance not including sub-episodes in the 16 and a half years since we first podcasted into the hyperwaves if a medieval monk were to transcribe all the bugles and get fancy with it we're talking high-end calligraphy and a full illuminated letter at the start of every paragraph plus extra illustrations to pep things up visually.

Let's say that works out around 2.2 words per minute, including the really arty ones.

And assuming he puts in a decent shift over a regular working week, well, he'd be writing out these exact words in approximately 16 and a half years' time, by which time I would have done another 600 episodes, and he'll be wondering, like some of the rest of us, what the f he's done with his life.

And hoping that Brother Thomas stuck to his promise to transcribe all the sub-episodes, spin-off sports-based shows, and Alice's

various shows, the gargle and all the others as well.

So it's a historical year and do join us to celebrate that history in March on our UK live bugle tour.

Details at thebuglepodcast.com and elsewhere on the internet.

And

I want to finish on a sort of hopeful note for the year and proof that social media can still be a force for good as well as a force for gratuitous anonymized hostility, barking bile into a logic-proofed echo chamber and the fostering of psychological anguish as elongated Muskerhound, to give him his full unshortened name, does his bit to reduce our species to a whimpering relic of its former self.

On

X, formerly known as Twitter, formerly known as X, formerly known as Twitter,

David Malone tweeted to us, or X'd to us, what is surely the image of the millennium so far.

So he tweeted this.

In the last Bugle podcast of 2023, Andy asked if someone could invent a new number for 2024.

I have generated a 2960 digit brackets probably prime number that has brackets probably never been used by humans before.

I call it the Zoltz Prime.

Now,

the image with the tweet, and I've retweeted this from the

Bugle X Twitter feed,

is all these numbers.

And, you know, it's got all the classic digits, like twos, fours, zeros, a hell of a lot of threes, plus the lights of your sixes, your nines, your fives, your sevens, your ones, and even your eights.

And together, as they're laid out in

a number of lines in a kind of rectangular shape, they make up purely through the shape of numbers

my face as portrayed in the Bugle logo.

It is unquestionably the greatest artistic creation of this or indeed any other millennium.

David adds in a follow-up tweet, I estimate the chance of someone having ever looked at this number before as less than one in 10 to the power of 47 and likely lower, the chance of this number not being a prime number should be lower than one in 10 to the power of 300.

So

there we go.

We talk about the logical end of civilization.

This might be the logical end of the Bugle podcast, this extraordinary creation.

So thank you, David Malone, for that, for restoring my hope in humanity and proving that numbers are better who needs a magic number when you have a number composed entirely of bullshit.

That's a truly beautiful thing.

It's a fascinating work, Andy.

I've been looking at it.

I've been looking at the numbers.

And if it is a prime number and it is the Zoltz prime, right, you could be on the verge of a mathematical discovery.

In that, there is no number in the world that can be divided, like a prime number is divided by itself and one only.

There is no number in the world that is divided by Andy Zoltzman

and one only.

I mean it's real art, you can tell, because the ones follow you around the room.

We are going to get this made in into merch

and we are going to be charging less than one Zaltz prime per t-shirt on that.

It's a currency.

It's a currency now.

Also, I'm going to use it as my

2960 digit long pin number.

So you'll be able to hack into my accounts if you study this number carefully enough.

Thank you, David, for your contribution to human and bugle culture.

Don't forget to

book your tickets for the live show.

If you enjoy the bugle

and want to contribute to its continuing freedom from adverts and existence generally, do go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button to make a one-off or current contribution.

Also, Chris has told me in no uncertain terms to tell you to follow and so what

to follow the show.

Chris, Chris, you're going to have to just because I'm not entirely up with all the things that you young people do.

So basically this is you can just click follow.

All I'm saying is there's a chance that someone right now is listening to the show and they don't currently officially follow it.

And I don't want them to miss out on next week's episode.

So just click follow now.

Right.

On any platform, does this work on all platforms?

All the platforms, you have to be all right.

All platforms?

It used to be that people had to uh quotation marks subscribe, but the podcast industry has now evolved very excitingly to use the word follow.

Okay, right.

Well, this is like messiahs all over again.

Um,

so

once again, it's a Jewish guy at the forefront of it.

Uh,

Well, yeah, I mean, I did accidentally just compare myself to Jesus, and I'm feeling quite dirty about it, to be honest.

But anyway, there you go.

Alice, anything to plug right now other than your forthcoming child?

Yes, Andy, I do have something to plug.

And it's not my utterance.

I have two specials that are now available,

a baby bundle price on GoFaster Stripe.

If you go to GoFasterStripe and look up Alice Fraser, my last two hour-long specials, Kronos and Twist, are available there for £10 for the pair of them.

Or if you subscribe to my Patreon, patreon.com slash AliceRazor, you can get them for free if you subscribe at any level.

So that's GoFasterStripe and look up Kronos and Twist.

I recommend watching them in chronological order because that's how I wrote them.

But you know, you approach time from whatever angle you like.

So that's either GoFasterStripe or patreon.com slash AliceRazor and you get to see my two most recent hour-long specials, both of which I'm very proud of.

And of course the gargle is

continuing unabated

for the rest of time.

Also, I do a podcast and it is the sister podcast to this podcast.

It is the Sonic Glossy magazine for the Bugles audio newspaper for a visual world.

We are currently

recording special episodes to cover the period during which I'll be,

you know,

off in baby dimension so you will have uninterrupted listening if you I assume follow the gargle on all of your podcast listening platforms.

Anubab anything anything to plug?

Well first of all I'm just fascinated that you know the bugle has caught up with Gen Z marketing.

I'm very happy that that's happening.

Gen Z was named after me.

That's correct.

Let's not forget that.

That's the level of influence I wield in this world.

What's a bigger claim than being like Jesus, I think?

You just let them at a free run, Andy.

Now you're just staking your claim.

It's fair enough.

I did a show called the Department of Britishness at Edinburgh last year, and due to some huge folly, I'll be touring it over the summer across a few British cities to embarrass myself, not just in London, but across the British Isles, because

you know I feel like there's, again, not enough people screaming for Britishness in the world.

So I have to come all the way from India to do it.

It'll be between the 15th of May and the 15th of June and the dates will be out somewhere on social media.

And I'll be there in person unlike the Bitcoin CEO who didn't exist.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

We do hope 2024 brings you all the joy and happiness that a year with a British and an American election can possibly bring, which is probably not very much.

Until next week, when we will have Nish Kumar on the show, 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.