Is 2023 Over Yet? Oh, and Merry Christmas

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to the end of time.

To the end of year.

End of year bugle of 2023.

This is the final audio newspaper of the visual year of 2023.

Welcome to the show.

I am neither Napoleon nor Beyoncé, which means by a process of deduction, elimination and averaging out, I must be Andy's Altzman.

And joining me to bid 2023, a firm Feufbujub, which is the acronym for f into the history books where you undoubtedly belong.

I'm delighted to be joined from all four hemispheres of the world.

From the south and east, it's Alice Fraser.

And from the north and west, Josh Gondelman.

Hello, both of you.

And the happiest of all possible Christmases.

Oh, Andy, if you're halfway between Napoleon and Beyoncé, does that mean that your motto is like, if you like it, then you should have conquered it, and made all the roads on the wrong side?

Yeah, that's how I've always lived my life, Alice, as you well know.

How are you?

I'm very happy contemplating Christmas the time of year when we, the pregnant, reflect on the possibility of your birth plan going horribly wrong and instead of getting to push out the baby in a calm water bath surrounded by chill midwives, you're eye to eye with a goat while three Nepo babies queue at the door like Amazon delivery guys.

Bearing gifts, you say.

Did anyone bring soup?

Is what I'm asking.

Did anyone bring

soup?

I just think you know this.

It's not.

It's a nice robe.

It's a nice robe.

A nice robe for the postpartum mother.

Come on, you're all kings or wise men.

I just, you know, you see all these beautiful nativity scenes, and I don't know about you, Andy, but I look at the beautiful nativity scene and I get to contemplate the miracle of birth in a humble stable, the laying of the baby in the manger, and which farmyard animal they fed the placenta to.

These are the questions.

I do think the placenta should be officially known as the surprisingly big placenta

from

harrowing memory.

Josh,

well, how are you as this year approaches its much-deserved end?

I'm doing well.

I'm glad it seems like we're going to make it to the end, which is exciting.

I mean, we were always going to make it to the end.

It's just when the end was going to happen.

So

December 31st, standard conclusion to a year is coming up.

I'm excited for that.

And I do.

I really love my wife and I are staying in New York for the last week of the year.

And it's so peaceful here between kind of the two big holidays, you know, Hanukkah and Holocaust Remembrance Day.

And so it's just, it's just a lovely, quiet time in New York between those two.

All right.

How's your Hanukkah gone?

I've kept it pretty low-key this year.

Oh,

we did it up.

We did it up.

We added a candle every night.

We're still going.

Every day.

I wish it could be Hanukkah every day, as the old song goes.

This is dangerous, Josh.

If you keep adding candles, eventually you become a Catholic church.

We don't want to make that mistake again.

This final show of 2023 is coming to you live and recorded from the shed on the 21st of December.

We are recording, that's the shortest day of the year here in the world's most popular and best-designed hemisphere.

You need some sea, the south, but not that much sea.

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

And, well, there's only one possible section of the bin this this week and that of course is a christmas section specifically the science of christmas uh we are just four days away from christmas as we record the so-called most wonderful time of the year which in the 2020s is a

low bar frankly um i mean the least rubbish time of the year might be a more appropriate uh title stroke uh song lyric uh but anyway the science of christmas has uh fascinated scientists uh well since uh nought bc stroke ad every year we dutifully put out our christmas stockings and demand gifts gifts from a cosplaying pensioner with a shocking record for workers' rights in exchange for a small glass of booze and maybe a mince pie if we can be asked.

But, whisper it quietly, the scientific revolution that has swept the planet like the plague that it is over the last few hundred, maybe couple of thousand years, has hinted that Father Christmas might, and I emphasise, might, for anyone listening with children under the age of 48, not exist.

So we at the Bugle in our ceaseless search for truth have examined the science to try to work out once and for all if the Santa rumours are true, false, or as is so often the case, somewhere in between, laced with just a hint of exaggeration.

So we've looked at the signs, and in order to deliver gifts to all the good, law-abiding children in the world in the time span available, the speed Claus would have to drive his reindeer at would cause the reindeer to catch fire and burn up within 8.4 seconds of launch, leaving a trail of overcooked venison strewn around the surrounding countryside, attracting vermin, vultures, and other scavengers such as hyenas and multinational fast food chains to pick over the carrion.

For some reason however, Claus does not make his reindeer wear the kind of protection they use on for example space rockets.

It's estimated that up to 20,000 reindeer must die each year in training before Claus finally decides to use a special chariot manufactured in secret by one of the world's leading military aeronautics companies and just stick some fake antlers on the front.

Fact three,

to deliver presents to all the little children in the time available, Claus would realistically have to use a gift delivery device that could blast tiny fragments of gifts over densely populated areas and hope that something, anything, made it down enough people's chimneys.

I don't know if you've ever seen the exploding whale video.

I assume that you have.

It's something that we've referred to

at various occasions over the past 16 and a bit years on the bugle, probably the greatest thing

in human cultural history, certainly on YouTube.

But that's the kind of technology I'm talking about.

We need controlled explosions kilometers above the Earth's crust for clauses to propel particles of present across a vast area.

That's really the only way he can achieve his goals.

And also, from a scientific point of view, many have speculated on the number of elves required to staff and operate Claus's business.

It's a hugely complex setup involving communications, manufacture, acquisitions, packaging, labeling, organization, ER, that's Elfin Resources, ES, Elfin Safety, Logistics, so much else besides.

And of course, the admin staff, which we never hear about.

The admin elves doing the unglamorous

year-round work, background checks on the behavior of potential gift recipients.

Also, they need to check the income, stroke wealth, stroke religion of the parents of the gift recipients, which anecdotal evidence suggests is a major factor in the quality and even number of gifts that Claus distributes to children, all that kind of stuff.

The estimated number of elves required, according to science, is 250,000, which ironically is the size of the army owned and run by the British East India Company in its exploitative asset stripping.

heyday in the 19th century.

Also, it doesn't have a lot of, I mean, his buildings aren't that big.

It'd be be cramped working conditions, and human inoculations famously don't work on elves due to their

different genetic makeup, meaning that disease is rife, and way more elves die every year from illnesses, dysentery, typhoid, all the old classics than actually die in accidents involving industrial machinery, forklift trucks or agitated reindeer.

So I think it's around about 60 to 70,000 a year turnover.

And also, I mean, let's not get started on the environmental footprint of Claus's operations, the carbon emissions, the methane emissions, doesn't bear fing thinking about.

But he's an old entitled broom who, frankly, couldn't give a shit about the future as long as he gets his performance bonus from himself.

These people make me sick.

And that, children, is the science of Christmas.

Now, following on from that, there was a story that just came out just, well, very shortly before we started recording, about a British vicar who gave a sermon to a load of to 200 11 and 12 year old school children in which he, I don't know, the article says revealed, I would say claimed that that Father Christmas stroke Santa Claus to give him his one of his tags does not does not exist apparently there were children in tears this was in Stevenage in in Hertfordshire

and the vicar claimed it was ex that the the children were old enough for him to deliver this this message well I don't know what what you think about it Josh and Alice but I mean to me it's risky you know when a vicar starts warning people that stories that they've been told to believe in might not be be 100% true, that is a boomerang that might come back to hit him at some point, surely.

Yeah, that's a slippery slope in that room.

Because

what is Santa if not

God with training wheels so children can understand it?

So once Santa's not real, that sweater unravels pretty quick.

But that's exactly why I feel like it's a necessary part of the process is you need to build people up to the idea that we're living in a meaningless void staring down the barrel of space that doesn't care about us at all.

You start with Zappa,

you move to God,

then you go to Elon Musk, you know, in order of the people who care the least about you.

I don't know what in your lives, what, you know,

how big Santa Claus was in your in your childhoods, your Father Christmas, as we tend to call him here.

I know my suspicions were

aroused at the age of five when

I went to a friend's house and she had a load of toys and I said, who's that from?

and she said oh that's that was from father christmas i said what about that one she said oh that's from father christmas as well and all these all these presents lined up all from father christmas and i and my brother this was pre-helen time we only got one we got one present from santa claus on the top of our stocking because our parents not unreasonably thought if we're going to spend this money we want them to appreciate who's who's who's got the stuff and that that made me think well i mean maybe i was a little jewish kid maybe you know this is just basic structural anti-semitism that the uh the christian kids get more presents.

And I get in a way you couldn't really argue with that.

But that's when my doubt, at the age of five, those scales started being chiseled from my eyeballs.

What about you guys?

I was brought up in a Buddhist household, so our introduction to Santa was my extremely Jewish granny who would dress up as Santa because she loved giving people presents.

And her idea of what Santa was was sort of

fairly abstract.

But certainly my Santa was a Hungarian lady with a beard who would have an goulash in the living room window.

That's a beautiful tradition.

My parents kept me in the dark because I'm a chatterbox.

So I don't, because I would have spilled the beans, which

there's nothing that shows that

that

despite its stated values of pluralism, America is really really kind of run as a Christian nation by a lot of our government, right?

As the fact that people of all other faiths are expected to lie to Christian children on the behalf of their parents.

That feels like we're living in a theocracy.

Jews, Muslims, Buddhists across America are expected to go, oh yeah, Santa brought that.

It's like, I don't give a shit what your kids think.

Yeah, but also, it's a really really good setup for a country that believes heavily in conspiracy theories because

I'm in on it, man.

This this thing goes all the way to the tub, mom,

and also, I guess, when you think about it, you know, what is religion other than the greatest conspiracy theory ever told?

Um,

but also, I mean, I think about this vicar and his and his 211 and 12-year-old children.

I think what my kids were like at the age of 11 and 12, and yeah, we brought them up to be appropriately godless.

Um,

and and yeah because i want them to you know make up their own minds and if they you know they are happen to discover that there is a a deity of some kind good good luck to them but if my kids at the age of 12 had had to give a sermon to 200 vicars i think a lot of those vicars would have ended up in tears as well

so it works both ways but i guess you know when it comes to you know as a vicar you're basically saying guy with a beard in non-practical red overalls delivers uh presence to hundreds of millions of children in a 24-hour window versus reclusive deity admits to a fair with spoken-for engaged virgin, resulting in magic Jewish child set to save humanity after largely wasting his 20s, then having a busy couple years on the Soviet as a stand-up and illusionist before being literally banged to rights on a messiah rap.

That is a tough call.

Which is the more believable story?

We will let the

religious stitches make the decision on that.

Top story: penises break more easily at Christmas.

No, well, not more easily, right?

More frequently.

That's different.

People are still putting in the work.

It's just happening more and more.

Alice, you're going to have to, as our penile fracture correspondent,

you're one of many roles, you've bravely stepped into the

breach in your years on the bugle.

Just quickly bring us up to date with this story.

I mean, this is just the inevitable result of what happens when people try to make all of your Christmases come at once, apparently.

penile fractures occur at a much higher rate during Christmas, which is either a terribly sad story or a very positive story about the magic of Christmas, making people believe that Santa can fit down.

If his Santa can fit down seven billion chimneys in a night, their dreams of improbably pornographic and gymnastic levels of banging are achievable.

I don't know.

I can't get on board with this, Andy,

or at least not at the right angle.

so so i mean this was a scientist this was a scientific research project that has discovered that that people are more likely to fracture their their their dangler uh at this yuletide time of year than than at other times times of year

which is strange to me because i feel like christmas is the least sexy time of year

well I've been thinking about the the least sexy holidays.

Yep.

Please.

Yeah.

American Thanksgiving because of just like overeating and genocide.

That really keeps you flaccid.

Christmas ranks below there for sure.

But American Thanksgiving, absolutely

least horny holiday.

4th of July, most horny.

It's just the sky is filled with dazzling orgasms.

And then Christmas is somewhere in the middle where it's like, it's, you know, there's all those songs about how sexy santa is for some reason

but santa is not sexy santa is just a a creepy man who's in your house eating your biscuits like i don't

and that's what a lot of people are into

santa shame we're not judgmental on this show uh each each to their own um well i think maybe we should move on from what is unquestionably the scientific highlight of 2023 and well done science once again for discovering the really important things in life um and are we sure that it was specifically christmas rather than hanukkah linked to these injuries anyway look let's not uh

let's let's not i don't i don't presumably the data's broken down by religious background anyway look let's let's let's let's move on

um now let's look at the highlights of this year 2023.

Now I am full disclosure, not that kind of full disclosure, what kind of podcaster do you think I am, but I am currently a resident of 2023.

But I like to think that I can still be objective about it and fairly critical of it.

And the way that I live in the United Kingdom, I like to think that I can still be objective about its failings.

And the same with the year, you know,

it's been great to be part of it.

But still, we need to look at it critically.

And it's a year that is certainly at the moment, you've got to say, it's in the running currently for a podium spot in the best year of the decade race.

It's very competitive, it has to be said.

2020 led the way initially and is still surprisingly in and around the top four.

2021 didn't physically pull up any metaphorical trees but still put itself in the mix.

2022, well even 2022 itself wouldn't claim to have been a classically good year, but you can only play what's put in front of you as they say and it sneaked its way into the top three.

And now 2023, we're still 10 days to go as we record, so we don't know yet if it's going to get into the top three or just hang outside it.

But there's still time for it to drop up or down the best year of the decade table.

But despite not really offering a lot for fans of good things happening, it is still in and around, in the reckoning with only on current schedule six more years of the decade to go.

It's given the judges something to think about, and that is all you can ask of a year.

So,

Josh, Alice, where would you put this year overall?

I mean, you can mark it out of 100 if you want.

You can give it a grade, or you can just say where you think it is

in relation to the other years of the 2020s so far.

I feel like by the midpoint, 2023, we realized was maybe not, we weren't doing our best work, and we're taking this on a pass-fail basis.

And so I will say this year has passed.

I feel like 2023 was the year that the world went from laughingly acknowledging that the thoughtless, neoliberal, might is right,

money justifies the means, algorithmic supercharging of engagement incentives online was bringing out the worst in people to finding out what happens when everyone does that on purpose.

Did you know Andres and Horowitz came out this week against regulating AI under copyright law by saying it will make it impossible for them to make a profit if they have to pay people for the stuff they use?

I've got to say I love this modern tech industry trend of not having a fing business model unless you don't pay for your materials or your safety protocols or your workers.

It's a really refreshing reboot of classical civilizations in that everything truly impressive turns out to have been built by theft or slavery, and usually both.

There's been so much

like intentional cruelty, so much

stupidity.

I think when a lot of weird stuff happens in a year, people liken it to that Billy Joel song, We Didn't Start the Fire, right?

It's just a list of things.

But I think, given how many own goals humanity has scored on itself, I think we have to reckon with the fact that I'm sorry, Billy Joel, but yes, we f ⁇ ing did.

This is on us.

We did this.

And also we threw some more logs on the fire.

Yeah.

We started the fire.

We stoked it.

We put a little newspaper in to get it going quicker.

Pulled some petrol on it, casually flicked a lighted match over our shoulder.

Cooked some hamburgers on it.

As they say, those who refuse to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them, and those who try to teach the lessons of history are doomed to repeat themselves.

Well, as I've said many times on this podcast, there is only one lesson we can learn from history, and that is that we will never ever learn the lessons of history.

And not just if you went to school in Florida, where it's prohibited to learn the lessons of history.

It's been actually a pretty good year for me, Andy.

My kid turned to.

I've just released two stand-up specials while also quitting stand-up.

Did you finish that sentence?

Your kid turned to what?

I was waiting for what it came from to turn to.

So

I'm going to turn it to a slightly larger kid.

I released two stand-up specials in part announcing that I'm now quitting stand-up and I'm pregnant again.

So if anyone has any TV or radio or movie writing jobs floating around, please throw them my way.

I'll have one and a half mouths to feed.

And personally, I spent, I think this is a very righteous cause.

You know,

writers and actors in

WJ and SAG AFTRA spend a lot of this year on strike.

So I personally spent a lot of time walking in circles around various buildings in New York, which was great.

For my calves, I have my

legs are like Michelangelo's David, and somehow the top half of me is softer than ever.

I feel my physique is like when you squeeze the toothpaste all from the bottom of the tube up to the top.

And it's kind of rigid and sinewy at the bottom and just kind of puffy and bloated at the top.

Well, maybe that's what Michelangelo's David actually looked like.

And when he saw the final version, he said, that's nothing like me.

That'd be great.

Yeah, delete that.

Take it again.

My balls are not that shape.

So let's look now at some of the highlights of the year.

And well, as we've hinted at, it's not been a great year for humanity, what with all manner of atrocious things happening pretty much wherever you live.

Obviously, the highlight for all humanity was the Ashes cricket series in the summer, which, from a personal point of view, gave me 24 days in which I didn't have to think about anything else other than cricket.

And the cricket happened to be mind-bendingly good as well.

And it just made me think that maybe

there's a lot of criticism about Test Cricket for not for being too long for the modern audience.

You know, five days from actually the Ashes was five five-day matches.

And

I've come to the conclusion that actually it's too short and that each game needs there needs to be just basically one game a year lasting 364 days with a day off for

Christmas or condensed form of canuka whatever religious festival you particular you want so that's for me that was the that was the highlight not so much the cricket itself but the fact that while the cricket was on I was

both spiritually and essentially contractually obliged to ignore the rest of the world and that is the one true path to happiness.

I think that's maybe the appeal of a jam band, right?

Like the Grateful Dead or Fish.

That just as long as they don't stop playing, we never have to return to the rest of it.

So it doesn't matter how good it sounds or how bad it sounds.

You might love it, you might hate it, but as long as it's happening, you're still there.

Absolutely.

It's a lesson for us all.

What was, Josh, what was your personal, well, what was your sort of highlight of the year from sort of any, you know, can be political or scientific, anything that stood out for you?

Oh my gosh.

It was a tough one.

I mean, I,

I, to go back to the same well, I really liked seeing the the

the labor actions across the United States and across the world.

I thought that was really heartening.

Um, I think it's, you know, one person telling your boss to take this job and shove it, that's that you're really going on a limb.

But you get everybody at the office to say it.

Now there's safety in numbers and just a real kind of harmonious chorus of f off, f you pay me is, I think, a really beautiful thing to hear.

And

that is one of the things that gives me a little hope going into 2024.

Alice?

Well, scientists have engineered an avocado that uses less water to grow itself.

So millennials can spend their housing deposit money in the calm assurance that they still won't be able to afford a place to live, but the place they won't be able to afford to live might not be in a desert.

Oh there you go.

That's as close as we get to a genuinely optimistic story these days, I think.

We will look ahead to 2024 later in the show.

Time now to look at exactly what's been happening this week, some late entrants for greatest and most idiotic stories of the year.

Let's start with

America news now.

And well, this is an interesting story, Josh.

Donald Trump's prospects of re-becoming president of America, the self-proclaimed land of the free,

which in every parallel universe, more sensible than the one we've unfortunately become stuck in, would be absolutely zero prospects at all.

But those prospects received a significant boost this week when the fake-faced truth-slaughtering pig was banned from running for president.

I mean, this is the best thing that could happen to him.

That the Supreme Court of Colorado basically said he can't run for president, which seems to have made it more likely that he will end up being president.

Such is the nature of American policies.

Have I interpreted that correctly?

That's correct.

It is

our politics is completely perverse, and it's fing opposite day every day.

And so Colorado Supreme Court disqualified Trump from holding office because there's a clause

that says you can't do that if you've contributed to insurrection and rebellion against the government, which Trump famously did on every TV channel in America for an entire day.

The problem is he's so proud of the insurrection.

That's his big problem.

Like he told everyone about it on television and it's like,

you can't talk shit about the whole group chat in the group chat.

You need to make the separate group chat with one person cut out.

And Trump didn't do that.

He just went on the regular TV stations.

It is...

It is tough news for him, right?

Because there's no way he's going to win a write-in campaign.

And I don't think it's because the support isn't there.

It's just that there's like a huge chance that Joe Rogan on his podcast will be like, oh, you do a write-in, you write someone's name down.

That's how the deep state gets your handwriting and cracks you all over the world.

So that's what I worry about.

But this is obviously, this is kind of a test meaning to, meant to be appealed.

to the U.S.

Supreme Court, not to be confused with Supreme Colorado, Colorado Supreme Court.

And when it goes to the U.S.

Supreme Court, I think Trump's going to win, right?

The court is so stacked with Republicans.

It's truly as if a court ruled that I wasn't the cutest little thing when I was a baby, and the appeal got reviewed by my grandparents.

What we'd have is two-thirds of them agreeing just out of hand with the dissenting opinion saying that it took me a little while to grow into my head.

It's really odd because the Supreme Court is meant to be the most legitimate court in the land, but the legitimacy of the Supreme Court is constantly undermined by the weird partisan way that America chooses to elect its judiciary, and specifically undermined by that one guy on the court who keeps accepting yacht trips and private jets from people he's about to pass judgment on.

Like whatever way the court decides, a bunch of people are going to refuse to accept the decision, which is sort of a definition of the complete failure of a justice system to be seen as a system of justice.

It is awkward when the people who are meant to be representing the ultimate in unbiased judgment, the final court of appeal for those failed by the legal system look like the statue of justice has cut eye holes in her blindfold and is putting all three of her thumbs on the scale.

Well, you said elector judiciary.

And wow, what a beautiful fantasy that sounds like.

These are nine unelected judges that were appointed in various states of

legitimacy by various presidents and various stalled tactics by Mitch McConnell.

Well, you say unelected, you know, they were elected elected on the one-man, one-vote principle.

That's right.

The truest democracy of them all.

Only one man, that man being the president.

So it is a,

again, something that we keep coming back to, the various ways in which democracies undermine themselves.

But the specific clause, section three of Amendment 14, that dates back to the years after the Civil War in the 19th century, basically 155 years, this clause has been waiting for its moment in the sun or the darkness um it was used a little bit in its early years but never against a presidential candidate it hasn't been used at all i was reading since 1919 and it's all about engaging in insurrection or rebellion barring you from from holding office if you sworn an oath previously not to do that now it seems that Trump might get off on sort of wording because this term engage in insurrection.

There's a doubt whether he engaged in it or simply encouraged other people to engage in it.

Now, obviously, this is a legal matter, and in legal matters, when it's a fight between pedantry and ethics, ethics usually hits the canvas multiple times in round one, and by the time the towel is thrown in the end of round three, it can't even remember its own name.

So, it's not, like I say, I think Trump's going to get away with this.

Now, I guess the challenge for him is, well, I guess that you know, the challenge is that at the last election, he inspired the biggest vote against a candidate in American Democratic history.

So, regardless of how many people bizarrely like him, they're still, I mean, still,

the divisive politics of America sort of work for and against him.

Yeah, it's tough because

you would like to think that the kind of safeguards of democracy are effective in a situation like this.

It seems pretty clear-cut.

But in terms of a clause that is a beautiful wish that cannot be real, this is right up there with Santa.

Well, it's also super depressing just looking at the landscape because it seems like, you know, Biden is deeply unpopular.

As far as I can tell, he seems to be doing a decent enough job at doing everything except seeming like he's doing a decent enough job.

That's absolutely crucial in politics.

Yeah, it's right.

The optics are bad.

And I think

people are mad at him about Gaza.

People are mad at him about immigration.

I think it's really like one of the big arguments

for Joe Biden, right?

People go, well, he's not Trump, and then you go, well,

we all aren't Trump.

That's a case for, in America, 360 million other people.

And also, I mean, this idea that whether this will damage him, it's unlikely to change anyone's mind.

I mean, if you've reached December 2023 and you are still making your mind up about Donald Trump, then A, in a way I respect you, and B, seek immediate help.

I mean, if this is the straw that broke your Trump-supporting camel's back, that was a fing weird camel.

And, you know, obviously as an outsider, Josh, I respect America's democratic right to eviscerate itself in a deluge of delusional fundamentalisms.

But

you're welcome.

I can't see.

But

I can't see how this will, as they say, shift the needle.

I mean, Trump is the leopard that not only can't and won't change his spots, but he writes all over his spots in marker pen to make them join up to say the words f ⁇ off everyone.

Now you mentioned immigration as an issue and once again Trump's view on immigration and words about immigration have come to the fore in the past week when he talked about immigrants poisoning the blood of the country, not for the first time.

And even several fairly Trumpish Republicans have criticised him for using such Hitlerish language.

And to the extent where there was a headline that, you know, again, I didn't think it was a headline that I'd see.

You know, ten years ago, if you

said, you know, would you predict,

former American president denies having read Mein Kampf after essentially quoting Mein Kampf.

I didn't expect that to happen, but

nothing surprises anymore.

So he denied having read Mein Kampf, although there was another story that there was something found in an article from Vanity Fair in 1990.

This was on Writers in which Ivana Trump, his first wife, reportedly told her attorney that Donald Trump kept a book of Hitler's speeches in his bedside cabinet.

I mean, it's strange thing what people keep in their bedside cabinets to help them perform, but I guess whatever works for you.

That's tough because the book I keep on my night table is so rarely the one I'm actually reading, which is, I don't know what's more terrifying that Donald Trump has read a book of Hitler's speeches or that he's just been really meaning to get around to it.

Well, it comes down to the core question here of whether it's worse if Donald Trump is plagiarizing Hitler without proper citation or just independently coming up with the same material by virtue of

great minds think alike.

I think that 100 racists with 100 typewriters eventually are going to write Mein Kampf.

Oh, yeah.

Anyway.

It's both.

Mein Kampf.

I prefer glamping.

The leader of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, described Trump's language as racist, xenophobic, and despicable.

So once again, Trump puts it what he appears to think of as the rhetorical treble 20 to appeal to

his core support.

It is, as you said, Mitch McConnell has come out against him because his wife, Elaine Chow, who is the Secretary of Transportation under Trump,

worked for him, was appointed by Trump.

But McConnell is also like promotes some pretty racist policies.

So it's like his priorities are number two, racism, number one, wife guy.

I would not have expected that.

And that is a tough choice, right?

For anyone trying to enter the United States because you might get turned away at the border or detained, or you might have to marry Mitch McConnell.

And either one is a terrifying way to get

family show Josh um sorry um

I mean there's some amazing things said by by Republicans after this these comments by Trump Ron DeSantis said he didn't like the blood poisoning language which was explicitly used by Hitler numerous times

and Ron DeSantis said when you start talking about using those types of terms I don't think that helps us move the ball forward so DeSantis didn't like the language not because Trump was quoting Hitler,

but because it doesn't help move the ball forward.

Now, look, I love a needless, contrived, sporting analogy, but

essentially

criticizing Trump for his play calling, not for talking like and acting like a fascist.

That seems like you're picking up on the wrong thing there, Ron.

Picking up the thing.

I mean,

because there are,

the criticism is that it's xenophobic and racist and horrifying and violent and dehumanizing.

And the sports metaphor is almost like saying Trump doesn't, given how much McDonald's Trump eats, he doesn't have standing to criticize what's in anyone else's blood.

His is mostly Big Mac sauce.

Anyway, we will have full, exclusive coverage of America's descent into the 35th and 36th circles of democratic hell over the course of the next 12 months.

I mean, interestingly, that's what Hitler called going for a walk, moving the ball forward.

I don't know if the Albert Hall was.

I don't think it was struck during the Blitz, and it does make me wonder whether there were specific orders not to bomb the Albert Hall so he could

recover his what he considered his lost possession.

Anyway, I digress.

Britain news now, and British politics is corrupt to its very core news and well just the latest in well Britain's efforts to I don't know mimic pay tribute to American politics this week Baroness Michelle Mohn a Tory member of the House of Lords has admitted lying to the media about her links to a company she had previously claimed she wasn't involved with that got contracts to supply PPE equipment during the co uh during COVID that were worth £200 million.

The company involved is PPE MedPro.

Her and her husband both claim they weren't involved in it.

It was a company set up, a new company set up in 2020, the age of what

John Oliver, my old partner on the show, memorably described as catastrophe.

And it got over £200 million worth in government contracts to supply face masks and surgical gowns.

There's now a court case against the company after it turned out much of that equipment couldn't be used and the government claims it did not fulfil the terms of of the contract.

And this is a story that goes to the heart of our politics as it currently is and how specifically it was conducted during during COVID.

The PPE MedPro contract was processed via the government so-called VIP lane.

Now the VIP lane was set up to fast track deals during the early stage of COVID for PPE from companies to make sure that companies that had absolutely no relevant experience in making medical equipment and had clearly been set up to take advantage of this catastrophe were not unfairly held back by the unfortunate fact that they had no relevant experience in making medical equipment.

So it was very important that

that kind of equality was achieved by the government, also to help people with contacts in government to be able to be rightly rewarded for their years of selfless, unheralded efforts to achieve scrutiny-free behind-the-scenes influence.

So

it was open to all of us to set up companies and get multi-million pound contracts and to wheedle our way into high-level decision-making.

And those of us who didn't do it, we can't criticise the scheme because that is just jealousy of those who did it successfully.

Frankly, that seems to be the prevailing attitude in large parts of British politics.

So, it's since transpired via investigations by The Guardian and the efforts of the Good Law Project, and amongst others, that this Moan's claim with her husband that they were not involved in this company were not only not entirely true, but entirely not true, and that they profited to the tune of around about 65 million pounds from the profits of this company.

Now, as I mentioned, she is a baroness.

She was appointed to the House of Lords as a life peer by David.

What the f are you doing back in our consciousness, Cameron, back in 2015 when Cameron was Prime Minister.

She's an underpants cryptocurrency and scientifically unproven weight loss pseudo-drug entrepreneur and tax avoidance fan.

And she was given a permanent seat in Parliament for the rest of her life for reasons explicable only by the willfully deranged and or David Cameron.

And there is a strong crossover in that Venn diagram.

So it's one of his many malodras bequests to the nation.

But anyway, this

I don't think Rishi Schunak needed another political scandal at this at this time of year, but

he's got one.

And it's one that really just seems to almost wrap up everything that's happened in this country under the last few years of Tory rule.

This was hard for me to parse because the details are so comical.

A former lingerie mogul named Baroness Moan, which does sound like an adult film star on a UK porn platform called House of Cummin.

And of course, if you start with lingerie, you're not making effective PPE.

That's not built for full coverage and opacity.

You want PPE to leave a little something to the imagination

i also she said her defense was that she lied to the press but was fully honest with the government yes which is like something you can only do when you have a lifetime appointment right where you go i was honest behind closed doors i just lied to the people i represent

Yeah, so in November, she and her husband finally admitted they were involved with this company.

They previously said they weren't involved with.

I mean it's possible they just didn't know and they only found out.

You know, as Christmas celebrity Jesus Christ himself once said, let he or she or they, who has never unwittingly earned £65 million from a company they didn't know they were involved in, cast the first stone.

So I mean we do have to see it from that point of view

as well.

And as you say, you know, she's now facing allegations of fraud and bribery, admitted lying to the media, which she described as not a crime.

I would go further than that and say it's fundamental to our democratic freedom, the ability of politicians to lie to the public, because we, frankly, cannot and do not want to handle the truth.

But yeah, but she's honest with the government, apparently.

And again, I don't know if that makes it better or worse, but it almost certainly makes it worse.

It seems like, at the very least,

she's guilty of some like gentle transgressions, which would in itself make a name for a pretty provocative line of lingerie.

PPE Medbro.

Gentle transgressions by Baroness Moan.

PPE MedPro is being sued by the government, as I said, for £122 million plus costs for breach of contract, and this is an intriguing term, unjust enrichment.

Now, when you're being pursued by a conservative government for unjust enrichment, you know you've probably gone a couple of steps too far on the unjustly enriching yourself train.

I mean, they have a high threshold before their safe word comes out on that one.

She's claiming she's been made into scapegoat courage to deflect attention away from the government's formidably all-encompassing and philosophically committed shambolicism that shaped their response to the virus crisis.

And in summary, A, our politics is corrupt to the core and B, our politics is also vastly, almost pitilessly incompetent.

Now, A or B, I think we'd all accept in Britain that we can't expect two out of two in terms of not being corrupt and being competent.

Not in a country like the UK, where we have nation-defining traditions of inbuilt corruption and incompetence that need to be protected.

But one out of two should not be impossible.

But yet again, it seems that we've not even reached that target.

Well, before we wrap up this final episode of 2023, let's look ahead now to 2024 and what we'd like to see happen in it, what we expect to see happen in it.

Any any predictions or wishes for

the next year?

I guess they say that every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction.

That's a law of physics, one of Newton's laws of physics.

And so, I guess, with that in mind, I hope that next year is the equal opposite of this year.

What just unexpectedly.

Kind of a Newtonian rebound.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Most physics is lies, to be honest.

It's all rumors and hearsay.

Sorry, I've got to stop reading the internet.

Alice, what are you hoping for, Stroke expecting for the next 12 months?

I mean, I am incapable of seeing any further than the end of January, at which point the event horizon of having a new baby takes place.

And then, you know, everything changes.

So

I hope January is fun.

You were in Australia.

Enjoy the cricket and the tennis.

Personally, I've got a few hopes for 2024 politically.

I'd like to see new voting systems around the world whereby only people from other countries are are allowed to vote in your elections.

So I think, you know, the American election would be far healthier if, say, only Germans were allowed to vote in it.

I think the British election would go way better if only people from Mozambique were allowed to vote.

People with a bit of distance and a bit of objectivity.

For America, for the American election, I'm frankly absolutely f ⁇ ing terrified about it.

I want anyone but Trump to win.

And this is from a purely selfish point of view.

Like I said, I like the idea of America, but if it wants to eat itself to death as a political entity,

that's not my business.

But as a comedian, as host of this, the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world,

I'm not sure I can stomach another four fing years of having to write fing jokes about the

uh so um there's a few little boots to take you into the uh the new year um

the uk election could the tori win fewer than two seats um look it it i mean if they carry on their current trajectory it's it's quite possible uh but sadly these things don't tend to end up quite as

utopiotically as you might like the Olympics in Paris I am I have big hopes for that I hope that it will just be extended forever and there is just a permalimpics going on for the rest the rest of time it's already kind of bloated and overlong they might as well take it to its logical conclusion I can't wait to see the Olympics in Paris where they make the Olympic rings out of smoke rings being blown out of a girl

I'm slightly hoping the UK might just enter a new dimension in space-time or just enter administration which is probably best for it.

Scientific breakthroughs.

I'm hoping they discover a new number that will make my cricket stats even more entertaining.

Maybe a new hour during the day to help us get more done.

And I'd like to see medical science finally develop a cure for pessimism, but sadly, I just can't see that happening.

Do you see how much it's needed, people?

No, you're probably not even listening by now.

Come on!

And I'd also like to see Elon Musk develop an anti-musk.

Again, that sort of, you know, for every musk, there is an equal and opposite anti-musk.

But we need that anti-musk to arrive in our dimension now.

That concludes the bugle for 2023.

We will try and put out something, maybe a review of the year during the next couple of weeks that we're off.

We'll be back in January to see how 2024 is

going.

Happy Christmas to all of you, buglers, and to Josh and Alice.

Do you guys have any final plugs for the year to share with our listeners?

Yes, I would like to plug.

I have a newsletter that I write every Monday.

It's full of pep talks.

It's called That's Marvelous, and it's got all my other updates.

It's joshgondelman.substack.com.

It's free every Monday.

Feel free to read and enjoy or ignore it.

It helps me either way, more one way.

And then I've got a bunch of stand-up dates coming up next year.

Batavia, Illinois, January 18th through 20th.

Beverly, Massachusetts, Boston area,

January 26th and 27th, and then St.

Paul, Minnesota, rescheduled for

March 1st and 2nd.

So come see me out on the road while I get this hour ready to record in the middle of next year.

I have two stand-up specials that are available now as a £10 bundle via GoFaster Stripe.

That's Kronos and Twist.

I recommend watching them in order because

that's how I wrote them.

But you can get them for £10 or you can sign up at my Patreon and get them for free.

And that's basically it.

Also, I have a book, The Dancy Lagarde Companion, that's available via unbound.com.

And I've got a podcast, which is the sister podcast to this podcast, The Glossy Magazine to the Bugles audio newspaper for Visual World.

It's called The Gargle, and it happens every week until the end of time.

Which, so it should have at least another 10 episodes in it, I think.

I can't see the end of time happening before the end of February.

But after that, all bets are off.

Don't forget, well, I say that.

The Bugle Live tour starts in March.

So I hope that the world lasts at least until the end of March.

There are various dates around the UK details on the Bugle website, thebuglepodcast.com, where you can also join our voluntary subscription scheme.

Don't forget that premium-level subscribers will get a vinyl, an exclusive, world universe exclusive vinyl record recorded just recently by Alice Nish and me.

That will be well, it's currently in the editing process.

You'll be receiving it early next year, so do join the voluntary subscription scheme if you want to get access to that.

Also, access to the monthly Ask Andy show.

Let me just emphasize how that is said.

Ask Andy.

It is not, as some people have suggested, a show called Ask Candy.

It is Ask

Andy.

and Buglers, I would expect better.

Nasha wouldn't expect better from you, but it's Ask Candy, and I answer your questions every month.

So do send them in whenever you get the chance.

Thank you for listening all year.

Thanks to all the wonderful guests I've had on this year.

Thanks to Chris for all the work he does.

He's not with us this week.

We have the wonderful Ped with us.

Thanks to Ped for everything he does for the Bugle and the Bugle Stable.

And we will be back in 2024.

And finally, to 2023,

off and don't come back.

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.