The Hot Dog Mercenary

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4268 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a world that does remain visual despite mostly wanting to close its eyes and think of something anything else.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann, the one true keeper of the sword of truth.

Oh shit, I've lost it.

I think I used it at a cricket match and left it in the pavilion.

Oh well, humanity can live without it.

I'm here in the most famous shed in Bugle history, in London, the most famous city in bugle history, in the northern hemisphere, arguably the most action-packed hemisphere in the history of the world.

And I'm joined today firstly from very far away as the crow flies, albeit that the crow would almost certainly die if it tried to fly that far, especially as it would be flying beak first into the gulf stream headwinds and over 5 000 miles that's about three times the longest recorded migration by a crow but were it not to die and fly in a straight it would eventually reach nato green in america hello nato how are you hello andy hello buglers good to good to see you i'm actually uh for a change of pace i am not speaking to you from california all right

I am speaking to you from the mountains of Colorado.

Right.

Have you taken refuge there?

It's beautiful country.

There's incredible, spectacular mountains and rivers and towns called like Rifle and Parachute and

Collapsed Mineshaft.

And there's neo-Nazis out here prepping for the coming race war.

I'm in Lauren Boebert country,

the Colorado Congresswoman, right-wing lunatic who

posted a Christmas photo of her zones holding assault rifles, you know, arming children.

We've frozen Liberian bank accounts for less.

But that's sort of, I mean, that's what Chris, that's that's the message of Christmas, isn't it?

That,

you know, if you arm, if you arm children, then King Herod won't be able to kill them all.

Wasn't that the whole point?

Yeah.

The only defense against a bad Judas with a gun is a good Jesus with a gun.

From slightly less far away, but still quite far away as the Haddock swims in Dublin, which is a bit of a tricky route for a Haddock to get to where I am.

But if he can work his way around the coast and then

find a way up the Thames as far as the Wandle tributary, then up Norbury Brook, I can pick it up near the station.

Anyway, joining us from Dublin, it's Neil Delamere.

Hello, Neil.

Hello, Andy.

How are you?

I'm very well.

Very well, thanks.

I am.

I come to you wrecked.

I have started, and I feel the need to to tell everybody this training for a triathlon

and all I have learned so far is the swimming section right

Chris is doing a cheer so I is in I assume he's training for something similar because he's just raised his hand in sort of I'm a qualified triathlon coach Neil so anytime you want me to work you over

okay okay well I mean as a reward or just

all I've learned so far is when you go for the swim training well I've learned two things so far first one is that if you want to figure out which lane you should go in the swimming,

you read what is on the other people's swimming hats.

So, like Dublin Triathlon, don't go into that lane.

Paris Iron Man, no, no, no.

Peppa Pig, that's the lane for me.

The woman with the full-on unicorn horn on hers.

It seems to be basically swimming, seems to be

you're just a member of the Republican Party in the US, in that you are completely out for yourself and obsessed with reducing drag,

Neil, so I assume that you were announcing this just to

taunt us in some way for your...

So

I would like to be in better fitness.

Tell me, as part of your fitness plan, do you continue to eat scones and have seven drinks a day?

Yeah, very much so.

But now it's not called an alcoholics problem.

It's called car bloating.

So, I mean, it's all about labels, really.

Well, of course, I mean, NATO, you know, on our team,

I mean, we don't need to do triathlons because when it comes to the swimming part, we just wait for God to part the seas for us.

So, it's really a biathlon is as much as

we need, not the kind of Winter Olympics biathlon.

I mean, Chris, how many triathlons have you done?

Did you keep a tally?

No, I didn't keep a tally.

I did a few.

I did more, I don't know, 10.

Let's we say 10.

Right.

Have you ever won one?

Yeah, I won every single one I ever took.

Oh, that's good.

By some margin.

Were you the only person in those races?

No comment.

But I mean, triathlon is essentially, you know, it's a metaphor for human evolution, isn't it?

You start, you know,

swimming.

I'm just trying to figure out how you're going to get biking and then running after biking as the evolutionary.

Well,

the biking they put in afterwards.

But so you go from swimming, that's, you know, then we evoluted out the sea, we learned to move, and then we developed machinery.

So, you know, it encapsulates all of human progress and

people wearing unnecessarily small swimsuits.

So, you know, what more could you possibly want from a sport?

I don't look great in the tri-suit, I'll be honest with you.

It looks like someone wrapped a bullock in cling film.

We are recording on the 26th of June, 2023.

The 26th of June is World Remember About Something a Day Late Day.

And we're celebrating this by recording on the 26th and not making the podcast live until the 27th.

There can be no more moving tributes.

The 29th is World Industrial Design Day so do try to design something industrial if you're listening to this.

Maybe a factory where you just input loads of atoms and it automatically makes whatever thing is most needed in the world right now.

That can't be far off.

Or a hospital that not only cures people but gives them a specially enhanced bionic body part.

Or maybe you can develop an automatic rainbow that can be assembled in under an hour and transported to anywhere in the world that needs an instant blast of metaphorical hope.

Get working, Buglers.

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

And this week, well, you mentioned you're in Colorado, NATO, but we've reached the quarter-final stage of the Bugle-sponsored World's Favourite Geographical Features Knockout Competition.

We've got this week, the quarterfinal draw.

It's mountains against rift valleys, estuaries against salt flats.

I think that could be a close one.

Atolls, a massive surprise last 16 win over peninsulas versus crowd favourite sandy beaches.

And Peak Bog, which Pete Bogs, of course, recently bought up by Saudi Arabia in their latest reputation laundering nature-washing investment against rainforest out of form over recent years, but still very tough to beat.

That's in the bin.

Also, this week, a free giveaway, a free scapegoat, someone or something to blame for your personal failings, the problems in society, or the fractures in humanity's relationship with itself and its planet.

We will draw this week's scapegoat out of the bag, and this week's scapegoat to blame everything on is

chamber music.

music there you go blame blame it on the chamber music everything is now fine yeah those sections in the bin

top story this week russia is in the midst of civil war oh it's finished it's finished already was

was this history's shortest ever civil war it seemed to last

about a day the the the i don't can it count as a civil war if one of the sides in it is a private company i don't know

Wagner versus Russia.

I mean, obviously, from a British point of view, private companies with armies is a bit of an embarrassing part of our heritage, as Annivabas explained with reference to the East India Company over the years on this show.

But it was a really strange, strange couple of days, partly because I was trying to follow this whilst watching nothing but sport.

I'm in between the first two Ashes tests in a professional capacity.

And I took my son son to a day of the women's test match and two baseball games in London whilst trying to follow the Russian Civil War.

And it's quite hard for me to get my head around it, to be honest, without seeing it.

I think he struck out.

Maybe he walked.

I can't remember who walked who struck out.

Anyway, the point is, it seems to be over the Wagner versus Putin Civil War.

And the question arises: has Putin shown strength in dealing with it, weakness in dealing with it, weak strength, strong weakness, weak weakness, or weak, strong weakness?

We have two experts on Russian internal politics and the art of mercenary warfare with us, NATO and Neil.

Can you just, I mean, can either of you fully explain what just happened?

Well, I once watched Gordon Ramsey drive across America with Gino DiCampo, and I thought that was the angriest chef I'd see on a road trip.

But no, it's Yevgeny Pergoshin.

Progoshin, in the plot of the worst expendables film ever, just took a band of savage mercenaries for a walk.

And that was it.

Now, don't get me wrong, like, it is lovely to see someone marching on Moscow in the summer for a change.

I mean, I really think it's like the World Cup, Andy.

I think it doesn't feel right in November or December.

It's June or July for me.

That is the time to march on Moscow.

Nobody knows what happened.

I was looking at the map.

Lipetsk is 100, well, it's 800 kilometers from their field positions in Ukraine.

So they walked 800 kilometers.

Now, if you do the conversion to Imperial, is there a chance that this is the weirdest tribute to the proclaimers that there has ever been?

Because that appears to be what it was.

And if you don't understand this, let me put this in terms that you'll understand, Andy.

He was on his way to Moscow.

He was on his way.

He passed his medical.

The deal was done.

Then Lukashenko swooped in and nabbed him.

And now he's going to Belarus for an undisclosed fee.

Could be 100 million quid, could be 150 million quid, depending on appearances.

Sadly, Victoria Azarenko is going the other way as a make we make weight in the deal so it's very unfortunate for her she is leaving tennis to command a lawless band of ex-convicts in an illegal war it is unlikely to affect her atp ranking so so that is the good news on that

well that's why she's in the wta not the atp so i mean it's not going to sorry yes sorry sorry i mean well then i'm definitely right

um i mean putin you know he's having a bit of a an awkward decade, NATO.

I mean, it's the kind of decade that makes you wonder if there is something deeply troubling him on a personal level.

And inevitability catches up with all dictators eventually.

It's just a question of time, method, and whether they're alive or dead to appreciate it, as Colonel Gaddafi's arsehole can testify.

But I mean, where do you think

this leaves Putin?

Well, you know, it was, I mean,

we had a civil war here between Putin and the Wagner group.

And, you know,

if you have to handicap your chances in a civil war, are you going to go with the despot who's been ruling Russia for the last 20 plus years or the guy that you never heard of before last Wednesday?

Which one has the better chances?

Yevgeny Progozhin

is a Jewish former owner of hot dog stand, turned mercenary warlord.

He leveraged his hot dog stand to a restaurant, to a catering business, to leading a mercenary army of 50,000 neo-Nazis.

And I have to say, as a Jew, it's really inspiring to see a Jew can be anything he sets his mind to, even a Nazi.

So, and I want to see that action movie about the hot dog mercenary where that opens with, like, I have spent a lifetime building up a very special set of skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.

Do you want pickle relish on that?

It's such a normal career path from hot dog vendor to it's like massage therapist to ninja.

It would be like if Andy became a mercenary.

What do you mean if

he was just roaming around with no shirt on and bullet strapped across his chest?

I do.

I love that idea.

That's the well-worn path that he's in.

He leaves prison, and they say to him in the job center, what do you want to do?

I want to be a hot dog salesman.

Okay, because that, if you play your cards right, can lead to international mercenary warlords.

Well, you know.

It's the normal progression.

Yeah.

I went from comedy into cricket stats.

So, you know, stranger things have happened.

So, Andy, Putin, as you know, is an egomaniac corrupt war criminal who surrounds himself with like-minded people, people who have a similar style and essence.

And Progozhin is the utmost of those.

He's sort of the pinnacle of that.

And he's gone beyond the other corrupt war criminals.

Now, the Wagner group is willing to go on all manner of military escapades around the world, but they had growing concerns that the Ukraine invasion was poorly planned and unnecessarily resulting in too many Russian casualties.

And Progozhin wanted something lower risk.

You could say that

as the pinnacle of corrupt warlords mild on Putin who preferred lower-risk invasions, it's really a case of pasta Putinesca with non-Perel capers.

Did I do that right?

I think we just all need to take a few moments to

appreciate the majesty of that.

He's opened the door to puns.

We are now on DEF CON 5.

I got to pot pasta Putinesca, Andy, and it took me about an hour and a half to work backwards.

And it was both a lot of work and I hated myself.

Is that how you feel?

Would you have to write funds?

Look, I'd say, I mean, that's a phase that we all go through.

And then you learn to accept yourself for what you are, and it all becomes a bit easier, Naito.

So, yeah, well,

if you think about this, like, this is a man whose practice of sending waves and waves of troops into battle with no care for their well-being was described as sending meat into the meat grinder, and now he's going to live in Belarus.

This is the man who puts the mints into Minsk.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, you know, those terminology might make sense of the transition from hot dog salesman.

Can we just say how weird it is, by the way?

I'll never get used to getting my breaking news from social media because the juxtaposition between the previous posts and tweets is just too much to handle.

It's like cat playing the piano, old couple dancing, mercenary lunatic standing beside pile of bodies, dog snuggling a baby, captain being hit with a sledgehammer, Jesus' face in a tomato, clouds that look like things, drone attack on Donetsk.

It's just too weird.

Did you see the Wagner troops in Rostoff on Dawn?

They were welcomed in, apparently, and they were wandering around getting coffees in a coffee shop, but they had their face

masked to cover their identities.

I really like the idea that they all have their face masked, but they still have to have their names in the cups.

i really want like i'm in a ballot level so you can't tell who i am i am like ninja uh you've gained proscia i've got a skin flat white for you prousia do you have the do you have the cinnamon

preguzzin is known as one of the world's least pleasant uh sticks i believe is the term uh and has been providing putin with murderous cannon fodder from the russian penal system and

i guess you have to say Putles has been a bit unlucky with this in a way, because it's turned out that relying on mercenaries led by a man of vast and unfathomable depths of

is a risky strategy.

I mean you would have thought you know that you know in the old days British mercenaries were at least bound by some form of honour

but you know maybe we can't even rely on that anymore.

I mean the relationship between these two has been souring like a bucket of British cheese for some time and Progozhin turned against Poodles.

After claiming the Russian army deliberately attacked his Wagnerian forces and he plucked the armed insurrection club out of his militaristic golf bag.

So I guess the question is: where now for Putin?

Because luckily for him,

from a British point of view, it coincided with Glastonbury.

So in the UK, at least, the media were rather more preoccupied with whether Elton John's voice is still what it was, what went wrong with Guns N' Roses' cryogenic chamber, and how disappointing it was that Lizzo had to step in at the last minute for Liz Tross.

So it didn't get quite as much media traction as

people were wondering, like, where Putin was, and they were also wondering who was Elton John's John's next guest going to be.

Now, that was the way to end Lastonbury.

If Putin just walked out and they played Rocket Man, that would have been amazing.

But he gave a speech today, Monday, as we record, in which he didn't refer...

to the coup attempt stroke insurrection at all which is a bit like doing a theatre review of our american cousin at the ford theatre washington dc on the 14th of april 1865 and not mentioning that a tall guy with a beard in the audience got shot during the performance it's that level of ignoring a key factor.

It's like going on a first date, taking a stuffed leopard with you, putting it in the spare seat at your dinner table, and then not only not mentioning it throughout dinner, but not even bringing up the issue of taxidermy.

That to me is how much he is ignoring reality.

Andy,

I think you're minimizing it because, you know, when Putin went on to address the nation on Saturday, do you realize how bad things have to be in Russia for Vladimir Putin to put a shirt on?

Putin only wears a shirt during times of great crisis for the Russian Empire.

Mutiny, pierogi shortage, or a pussy riot concert.

Does he wear more clothes the worse it gets?

Like someone trying to, you know, on a Ryan airplane where you don't want to pay the extra baggage and you're wearing like every coach you've ever owned.

If he ever comes out and layers, we are fed, ladies and gentlemen.

I like the way.

What he said was, we will not let this happen again.

We will protect our people and state from any threats, including internal betrayal.

What we're facing is exactly a betrayal.

What else is he going to say?

He's not going to just go, we will let this one slide.

Everyone has an off day.

He probably has low blood sugar.

Give him a twix and see if he changes his mind.

Like, the big question is, oh, how does this end?

I'll tell you how it ends.

Novichuk Shower Gel.

This is how this ends.

He's going to be in Minsk going, oh, look, oh, coconut with a hint of polonium.

Gone.

So I guess the question is, what next for Putin to rebuild his rather shattered grasp on power and his image as this uber-powerful overlord?

What could he do?

Could he invade somewhere else?

Could he join forces with Ukraine against Wagner?

Or would he take up arms with another mercenary group named after a famous composer?

In which case, I'm not sure who would be on his list.

Iverdi might go for a lesser-known composer, so long as they're satisfactory.

But he won't want to be seen to take a backward step, even if he is hiding away in the Kremlin and people are calling him debusi.

I guess he's just trying to get a handle on the situation.

He doesn't want to be choping and changing too much, but it could all unravel,

which could bring things to a rapid halt.

He won't get any help from Britain, to be sure.

Not half his egregious behaviour.

But he might need to beg other countries for troops or use equipment that he's borrowed in.

But I guess he could just go out on the streets of Moscow and pick up any old chancel who's prepared to go and recklessly just go and grab a rash man in off the streets.

Anyway, I can't see ending well, unless someone can talk saint sance into him.

I digress.

There was no warning.

We've won it go.

Up until that point,

I would usually condemn somebody for hitting somebody else with a sledgehammer, but

there was a point in the middle of that where I could kind of see

pure light and truth how you could be driven towards it.

I feel better about my puppet nest a bit.

You shouldn't.

Chris is the most devastating one, isn't it?

You don't expect it from Chris, and then he just comes in.

It's like a ninja.

Is this your bedside banner when you're doing triathlon coaching, Chris?

In other Russia-related news, well, it's been a really tough week for Russia because not only have they had to deal with a

millisecond-long civil war, but they've had legal problems in Australia.

Australia's top court has rejected Russia's bid to retain a plot of land on which to build a new embassy in Canberra.

Russia's claim fell above the statutory no-worries threshold of Australian law, and the some worries cited were that it could be used for spying, as it's only a few hundred yards from the Australian Parliament building.

A Russian diplomat had been squatting on the site.

Not the most concerning Russian occupation of someone else's land the world's had to deal with of late, to be fair, but apparently he has diplomatic immunity, which actually cannot be spontaneously revoked without direct approbation from actor Danny Glover.

So it wasn't quite as simple as might have seemed the case at the time.

Neil, I know you're an expert on the title.

Great topical reference in.

That is a quality lethal weapon.

Diplomatic immunity.

Quality.

It's about my most recent cultural reference in the nearly 16 years I've been doing on the other side.

The villains in that one were South African.

Did you feel a special connection to that one, Andy?

Listen, we're lucky he mentioned a talkie.

That's right.

That he got anything more recent than Euripides.

So, I mean, Neil, I know you're

a big fan of Australian land and property law.

Whose side are you on with this?

Well,

the Australians think that the Russians might use it for spying.

I mean, I think the giveaway was that the new embassy is shaped like a big glass and it was going to go right up against the wall.

And I think maybe the plans gave that away.

You look at this and there's a diplomat squatting in the building.

I'm going to go out on the limb here and go, he's not their best guy.

Okay.

I'm just going to say, I don't think he's the best spy stroke diplomat.

Like, they're not putting the A team on squatting duty.

They're not, you know, here's one for you.

You know, Hill Street Blues, where they used to hand out the assignments at the start of the Hill Street Blues.

I don't, I can imagine they're like, now listen don't be offended by the the assessment we're just giving out the roles based on the talents and uh uh he's a trained sniper and explosives expert so he's going to go into the field and john you're 25 stone and profoundly agoraphobic so we we we just thought that you could squat here and see if anything changes what i do hope is that he holds out and then the city develops around him and the skysha skyscrapers are built and shopping centers are built and then he's in the he's in the middle like in a little lean to like the old man in in up,

and he just holds out and he holds out.

And then he escapes eventually by attaching a load of balloons onto the little lean to that he's built, and it floats away into the sunset.

And as it almost disappears, the Americans shoot it down for being a Chinese spy balloon.

That's that's how I see this ending, broadly speaking.

Right.

Well, I think you might be disappointed because the latest reports say that he has left in a car.

Um, it's rather anticlimactic, unfortunately.

Yeah, you know,

is he headed for Belarus?

Billionaire news now, and well, it's the contest everyone has been waiting for.

Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are to have a cage fight, and they are deadly serious about it, according to the boss of UFC.

Now,

I've made no secret on this podcast over the years of being a fan of the concept of human civilization.

In fact, you could indeed argue that the bugle is in fact a part of human civilization, albeit tangentially.

But there is an increasing sense that, really, human civilization has had its f ⁇ ing chance and it's f ⁇ ing blown it.

Because if people are going to pay money to watch Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk fight, we have fed it as a species.

We have nothing more to do.

We have nowhere else to go.

We're done.

We've had a go.

And that's it.

We've shown we cannot be trusted with ourselves or our planet.

Are either of you excited about this imminent showdown?

Yeah,

I have a degree in software engineering, and this is going to be the geekiest fight in history, my friend.

They're going to have C3PO as a ring girl.

Walking around with a card with a round number on it.

010.

Oh, it's round two.

Lovely touch.

It won't just be them.

They're going to have to have an undercard.

Like, you know, the two corporate bosses going against each other.

I want to see Ronald MacDonald knocking the shite out of Colonel Sanders in the welder wish

before that.

Tony the Tiger ripping the Cocoa Buck, put Coca-Pups monkey to shreds.

Stop turning the milk brown, you simian f.

That's what I want to see.

I've got so many questions.

What's it going to be called?

All the great fights have to have a name and they bring up one person in your head.

The thriller in Manila is Joe Frazier and the Rumble in the Jungle is Ali.

And the attack in Ponte Fract is Oliver Cromwell.

The brawling Gaul as Julius Caesar, the pasting at Hastings as William the Conqueror,

Wombat Combat, Captain Cook.

There's loads of them.

What's it going to be called?

And I'm prepared to overlook the fact that Elon Musk is a weird man.

Elon is a weird name.

I'm convinced this man couldn't spell Noel.

That's what I'm absolutely convinced by.

Well, I mean, that's interesting, isn't it?

I mean, if he'd been called Noel Musk, it's quite hard to believe that he would have been nearly as successful as being called Elon Musk.

No, and he's just, is he trying to get the aggro out that he's now the second richest man in the world behind the boss of Louis Vuitton MH, LVMH, which is all those fashion houses and perfumes.

Like, that must annoy him.

Elon Musk is beaten by the head of a company that sounds like it makes something called Elon Musk.

That must really, really annoy him.

But I'm here for the two of them knocking seven bells of shit out of each other.

I'm not even sure that Elon Musk knew what a cage match was.

Like, he's so out of touch and clueless.

You think that he thinks that he can have a second, you know what I mean, to do the fighting for him

and just send someone else to take the pops.

Well, I think, I mean, I don't mind, you know, I guess the idea of Zuckerberg and Musk having some kind of contest, but I think they should each fight each other using a mechanical death robot that they've built themselves.

And I think that would be a more appropriate contest for these two tech mega dweebs.

But I guess

I like the idea of either of them getting beaten up.

I just have trouble rooting for one or the other.

I would like either of them to fight.

I would like both of them to fight literally any Stevedor in the world.

I guess it's a question of fairness and freedom of choice.

If highly skilled, athletically honed professional pugilists are allowed to fight each other for money and the entertainment of others, why shouldn't tech zillionaires and escape bond villains do the same?

And, you know, if you stop Zuckerberg and Musk pummeling the shit out of each other's suspiciously wealthy faces, do you not crush the dreams of all the children of the world, past, present, and future?

No.

No, you don't.

You just make people watch two metaphors for human excess compete in a metaphorical performance art piece about the dangers of human excess.

I think this should only be allowed if Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather can each set up a multi-billion dollar tech company first.

Then I think it will be a fair exchange between

the tech business and the fight business.

Oh, yeah, I've set up a brand new company.

Thanks for the cheese.

Oh, God, no.

While we're talking about

billionaires, many billionaires own yachts, and many yachts likewise own billionaires.

I think.

I forget the relationship between the two.

But this was a story we picked up on a few weeks ago about the ongoing war between orcas and yachts and essentially between orcas and plutocrats, which I mean, I think orcas are naturally a a species that favours greater redistribution of wealth in human society and they've they've started to try to make that point by

by attacking yachts.

And uh that w we reported on the attacks uh in uh Gibraltar, off the coast of Gibraltar a few weeks ago.

It turns out these are now becoming global and it tur it this is essentially the start of the end times.

If

when orcas attack yachts,

it's not long till the entire natural world is ganging up against us and turfing us off the planet.

One expert said that it's unlikely there is a revenge element in these orcas attacks, which to me seems to be one of the most deluded pieces of bullshit I have ever heard.

Why would there not be a revenge element to an orca attacking a yacht?

There's no logic in that.

Can either of you see why an orca would not be vengeful towards humanity?

Yes!

Since killer whales are attacking yachts, since 2020, there have been 500 reports of orca encounters off the Iberian Peninsula, right?

Some lunatics like you think that it's singling out rich people's yachts and attacking them.

The idea that these jumped-up sea badgers could get together and orchestrate, and I'm spelling that O-R-C-A-S-T-R-A-T-E, attacks on ugly yachts is madness.

But my main issue with it is the idea that these whales have somehow organized themselves to take on boats in Spain and Portugal, and that's where they'd start.

No, Japan is where they'd start.

Norway is where they'd start.

The next time some Japanese or Norwegian whaler looks out over the bow and sees 40 orcas heading towards him, balanced on each other, like the human pyramid that you used to see on the motorbikes in record breakers.

You're not firing off that harpoon.

You're going to shit yourself.

Remember what Attenborough said.

Never trust something that looks like a fish f ⁇ a piano.

Orchestration actually might be one of the ways of dealing with this problem actually.

We'll stop stopping breeding.

It's not just that the orcas are attacking yachts, but that they're, I mean, for me as a union guy, that they're getting organized.

You know, like, like you imagine that the orcas are having meetings, being like, you know, planning the, like, the way that we used to protest, like, the, the World Trade Organization, is you'd have an affinity group that would have a name, you know, like the Orca Anti-Colonial Emancipation Front or whatever, the Waterfront Liberation Front.

And

then you'd have a meeting.

People would use consensus.

You know, there would be a motion.

And then the Orcas would decide, okay,

I'm going to take the stern and you're going to take the aft.

We're going to try to jam up the rudders.

We're going to like it's like the the orcas have been have been reading some noam chomsky and some uh mao tzedong theories of guerrilla warfare they're ready uh you know i'm i'm i'm i'm all for it what do we want

when do we want it

andy uh all week long i knew that we were going to have to talk about the Titan submarine explosion.

I was following that story.

I was like, we're going to have to talk about it on the Bugle.

But the internet had every possible take already.

Do you know what I mean?

I was just watching joke after joke.

And then you sweet, sweet man, came across with Boris Johnson's editorial in the Daily Mail.

And I realized that the take I was waiting to hear was Boris Johnson's take on

the Titan submarine accident.

Everyone gets to weigh in, but the only takes that I want

are from delusional men who used to be powerful.

Let's just have a podcast of Boris Johnson, Augusto Pinochet, and Bill Cosby talking about

the Ocean Gate fiasco.

So

the Titanic ship, the historic metaphor of human hubris, being the cause of death more than a century later in yet another monument of human hubris, being hailed as heroes by Boris Johnson, who is the embodiment of human hubris himself.

It couldn't be more on the nose if the essay was written not just by Boris Johnson, but specifically by bacteria living in his nostrils, and his profile pic had piles of dead bodies of people who died of COVID while he was Prime Minister stacked behind him.

He thinks it's a testament to the greatness of the British to explore the frontiers of human knowledge.

Meanwhile, 750 migrants of a boat in the biggest sea tragedy of the Mediterranean since the Odyssey.

The migrants were coming from Palestine, Syria, Pakistan, Egypt.

He wasn't interested in them.

They weren't testing the frontiers of anything except how quickly Suella Breverman could put them on a plane to Rwanda.

Well, I mean, he said, amongst various other things that he said in this article, he said, as you see, Harding and his friends died in a cause pushing out the frontiers of human knowledge and experience that is typically British and that fills me with pride.

Now,

typically British things

to do presumably include

trying to move from one part of the world to another to build a better life.

It doesn't get more British than that when you look at the history of our empire, but it doesn't seem to be applying that logic to the victims of that tragedy or any other hundreds of tragedies like it that we've seen

in recent years.

And also, it wasn't just a British crew.

There was, you know, there was a Frenchman, there was an American.

Did they suddenly become British in their final moments?

It was one of the weirdest articles in Boris Johnson's personal history.

And that is essentially the same as the history of humanity in terms of weird articles.

He's got quite a lot of entries into the top hundred.

And notably, he left out any mention of

the regulatory failures and the warnings that were ignored before the vessel sent out.

So before the ship, ship, the Titan set sail

or took the plunge, three dozen people warned the company that the thing wasn't safe at a depth of 4,000 meters.

And Ocean Gate CEO Stockton Rush decided it was safe as it had been tested for safety by dipping it gently into a backyard swimming pool like a strawberry at a fondue party.

And it's what a shocker that Mr.

Tragon Trace didn't mention that ignoring advice

leading to death is a vanity project

that the rest of the world calls moronic, but Boris Johnson calls typically British heroism.

He also drew parallels with the early years of flight and the Wright brothers.

He said, Look at those first flying machines, weird contraptions of leather and canvas and wood.

It's possible he's mixing it up with his own former number 10 dungeon.

But we don't know about that.

He said they were lethal and yet no one tried to regulate.

Again, we don't know what he's writing about.

That could be anything from his political life, lethal and unregulated.

But anyway, anyway, he was talking about the early aeroplanes.

The whole idea was new.

And to an extent, he's got a point.

Albeit, that point is completely irrelevant and wrong.

Because the first occupied submersible went to the bottom of the bottomless bit of the bottom of the ocean, the Marianas Trench, in 1960.

That is 63 years ago.

This is...

So this is not new.

Saying this is new is sort of like saying that Gapier students getting drunk in barley are bravely exploring the virgin wilderness of the Pacific.

It is not correct.

Does he think Jules Verne is still tweeting and it just started?

Oh my god, this.

I'm fond of this new influencer.

He's writing this thing about 2,000 leagues under the sea.

20,000 leagues under the sea, it's amazing.

By the way, lethal and unregulated are what Boris Johnson calls his testicles in said fuck dungeon.

And also Orville and Wilbur, if it really said so.

He also said that Hamish Harding and his fellows were trying to take a new step for humanity to popularize undersea travel to democratize the ocean floor.

Now, again, conservatives in their grasp of what democracy is are a little off the seesaw.

Exhibit one, Boris Johnson's resignation honours list, in which he tries to bake his cronies into our political decision-making system for all f ⁇ ing time.

Besides, as I said,

it's not a new step.

It's been done a lot.

There's so much wrong with this article, and clearly there's deep personal tragedy for the families of those involved.

At the same time, this whole whole thing is beyond idiotic, and it sits ill at ease with the deeply human tragedies that have been given far less media coverage, as you were saying.

Stop reading Boris Johnson's columns.

He is simply the answer to the question: what would it look like if the hunchback of Notre Dame a bale of hay?

Well, Neil, it's all really all you're saying that now, but what we needed was people saying that 25 years ago, of which there were some, but we ignored them, and the rest is British history.

Okay, a quick bit of American news now, and well, there's been a slightly awkward visitor to America.

Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, has been visiting America, and he's a man, as we've talked about on the Bugle multiple times, that human rights fans find a little hard to warm to.

He puts

Western nations in a rather difficult position.

On the one hand, he is the leader of the world's most populous nation.

He was elected by a democratic vote.

And on the other hand, Jesus, Narendra, is there any chance you could stop being such a?

And it's an awkward balance to strike, given that, you know, he treats the concept of a peaceful, multi-faith, multi-ethnic nation the same way as a psychotic child treats a captured spider.

He just gradually pulls each of its legs off.

until there's nothing left.

The Modi visit,

also, I think, Andy, you're not realizing, was an example of the woke mob running amok in American life.

They gave in to the Libs

because he came to America for a steak dinner and it was a fully vegan, plant-based meal.

I don't know if you looked at the menu.

There were two different courses of millet.

And this is bullshit.

I don't care if he's a vegetarian.

He's in America.

He should have to eat chicken-fried steak and steak-fried hog and catfish-fried babies and ham-fried whiskey, because that's what we do in America, goddammit.

Oh, this isn't this is a non-story, lads.

Right.

Oh, a former British colony with a green, white, and orange flag, and a leader of Indian heritage goes to the White House.

Happened on St.

Patrick's Day, happens all the time.

We're always there.

We have our own key, essentially.

This is just a non-story.

He did a big yoga event as well on the Wednesday, which was, I was very impressed with his yoga yoga positions, I have to say.

Did you see them?

He did authoritarian nationalist pose, where you turn to the right,

that's it.

A paranoid populist pose where you look over your shoulder and you're just always doing that, really.

Government human rights pose where you hover because you do not have a f ⁇ ing leg to stand on.

Well, it's only fair to say that Modi doesn't merely split opinion.

He dices it up and kebabs it.

And as history shows, you know, it's all very well supporting human rights, as we like to do.

But that political impulse often founders when it comes up against the words nuclear armed trade partner with almost 1.5 billion potential customers.

And that is why Modi is such an awkward man for Western countries to deal with.

Also, it's a bit hard for countries like America and specifically the UK to tell Modi's India, you should be more careful with the kind of people you put in charge of your country.

Those words are ringing even hollower than they used to after the past 10 years.

That brings us to the end of this week's Bugle.

The Bugle Ashes Zoltzkast, bringing you daily statistics from the Ashes cricket series.

We'll be continuing with the Lord's Test beginning on Wednesday the 28th.

Thank you for listening so far.

If you've enjoyed it, do tell everyone you know.

It will be featuring producer Chris from now on.

We're going to turn it into a bit of a two-hander

over

the course of this next test.

It was, NATO, I don't know if it was big news in America, the first Ashes test.

It was a journey into the very nature of drama itself, a swirling narrative of human and mathematical fluctuations.

It was pretty much the high point of all human civilization.

Did it get much traction in the States?

Nope, not a bit.

All right.

That's a shame.

NATO, do you have anything to plug?

I sure do.

Buglers of New Mexico.

On Saturday, July 8th, I will be headlining the Drive Heat Comedy Club.

Go to their website, Drive Heat Comedy Club, for tickets.

I mean, and also buy my albums, preferably on Bandcamp, the Whiteness album, Mr.

Natal Green on Instagram, the usual.

Neil, what have you got coming up?

I've got the podcast out this week.

Why would you tell me that?

And this week we talked to a man, a scientist, about why if you drink with diet mixers, you actually get pissed more quickly than if you drink with normal mixers.

That's good practical life advice that we need from podcasting.

Next week, we have

we explore how a word gets into a language.

So English usually kind of takes words in organically, but for other languages, particularly minority languages, how does, how, what's the Irish word or the Scots Gaelic word for fidget spinner?

Somebody has to decide, and we talk about that next week.

And I'm doing the Edinburgh, I'm not doing the festival, but I'm doing the stand in Edinburgh in September.

So you can get your tickets at the usual places.

Before we go, we have a couple of things to plug.

The Dancy Lagarde book, funded by you, Bugle listeners, is approaching its funding target.

Chris, this is the full transcripts of all the Dancy Lagarde masterpieces from Alice Fraser.

I can confirm, Andy, that as of this afternoon, we have passed the funding target and it is no longer a pledge.

We're now officially in pre-order phase.

The book is happening, but people can still

pre-order now and get signed copies of the book and all kinds of other things.

And Alice and I had a call earlier on today and she now realizes that she's actually got to do some writing.

So congratulations, Alice.

Good luck.

People can pre-order the book now, sign copies, go to unbound.com or go to our website or go to the other places on the internet.

That is the sound of bugle listeners calling someone's bluff.

Also, Chris, you have a charity bike ride coming up.

I do.

So on Friday morning, which is the 30th of June, Andy, I'm going to wake up at sunrise, which I think is about 4.45 a.m.

in the UK that day.

And I'm going to get on my bicycle and I'm just going to start cycling.

I've got no route, no one with me.

I'm just going to keep going.

I think, depending on, I'm going to go with the wind.

I think I can do two, 300 kilometers maybe, all being well.

Maybe I'll get to Yorkshire or Bristol or something.

And

I'm putting myself through this.

Well, one, because I'm an idiot and I like hurting myself in such idiot ways.

And two, I'm doing it for a charity called Sea Watch, who are a Mediterranean-based charity.

They're the guys who are in the Mediterranean.

basically trying to save migrants lives off the coast of Libya and Greece and all that.

And so it will hopefully fund a little bit the boats and the helicopters that they use to try to save people's lives.

And how can people

support your ridiculous, literally pointless and endless bike ride?

Yes.

They can go to the show notes for this programme and I'll put a link in the show notes or I'll put a link up on Twitter at some point as well at ProducerChris.

There we go.

Do support Chris and his lunacy.

His

recycling based lunacy.

If ever there was a metaphor for the political leadership of the UK,

just start riding and see where you end up.

With no direction, literally letting the wind decide the course.

I mean, I'm not saying it's a good idea, Neil.

I think we all know it's not a good idea.

But at least for once, someone will actually benefit from it.

There we go.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

We will be back next week.

Don't forget to listen in to all the latest numbers from the Cricket on the Bugle Ashes Zoltscast.

Until then, 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.