Future Of Humanity Update

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4265 of The Bugle, the longest running and only covert coded potato processing industry podcast, uncovering the reality of what happens to potatoes once they've been hauled from the soil they once called home and cast into the mechanical whims of the human food chain.

If you listen to this show backwards you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

For those listening forwards I am Andy Zoltzmann.

It is Tuesday the 30th of May 2023 and this week on the Bugle we will be exclusively revealing the winners of the 1934 Oscars.

I don't want to give too much away but if you're a fan of rom-coms and specifically of It Happened One Night, you are in for a treat.

Sadly, the winner's speeches will be for circumstances beyond our control somewhere in the brief to non-existent range at the shorter end of that range too.

But before that, we have our regular endoscopy of the world's news-filled guts, for which I'm joined by none other than rock legend Mick Jagger himself.

Sorry, by two other than Mick Jagger himself.

The first of those two from the bucolic idil that is southeast London, back for the first time in a long time.

It's Chris Addison.

Hello, Chris.

Hello, Andy!

Hello, it's lovely to be back with you.

It's a relief, if I'm honest, to be back.

I've just this minute returned from Moscow, where I have my first ever drone flying lesson.

Didn't go as well as I expected, although it did seem to go as well as my instructor Vlodymir expected.

He's quite happy with the whole thing.

But I feel like this week was an important moment.

There was an important moment reached for you in the evolution of cricket when the Indian Premier League

T20 final started on Saturday and finished on Monday, proving that the short form of the game can be played, Andy, over multiple days.

And I think that's the compromise you've been looking for.

Yeah, in some ways.

I think, I mean, it does show that, you know, compromise is possible between warring factions on this earth.

And, you know, cricket is essentially in a state of

mutually assured destruction with itself.

It's very much a metaphor for modern America, I think, in a lot of ways.

So, yeah,

this is very exciting.

It's amazing what rain

can do to improve the duration of something.

Also, joining us from the bucolic adil that is Brooklyn, New York City.

It's Hari Kondabolu.

Hi,

it's really great to be back.

And I know that I was banned from the Bugle for a few months based on those terrible, terrible things I said about you in that podcast.

And

I'm glad you were able to forgive me and have me back on.

Right.

I mean, that does seem to happen pretty much every time you do this show.

That

there's a ban that lasts several months.

But, you know, we've got to be able to do that.

Yeah,

I believe the podcast I said the terrible things on was this podcast oh right okay yeah and i think that uh

i don't think that that was the smartest move

but we are we are forgiving at the bugle so you're you're welcome back um for a probationary episode um we are recording as i said on the 30th of may 2023 thursday the 1st of june is National Say Something Nice Day in the United States.

Were you aware of this, Hari?

National Say Something Nice Day?

No, no.

Malcolm X still doesn't have a day, by the way.

But yeah, continue.

Maybe the Something Nice could be, please, could Malcolm X have a day?

Yeah, there we go.

It stands out from the other 364 and a quarter days of the year, like a mechanical laser-eyed, fire-breathing elephant in a ballet competition.

But still, we need to take the opportunities to say something nice to each other these days.

So here are some phrases for our American listeners to say to their fellow Americans on National Say Something Nice Day.

Phrase 1: Your interpretation of your Second Amendment rights is one of the most charming pieces of willfully misunderstanding 18th-century legislation that I've ever had the pleasure to enjoy.

Phrase B: I mean, I wouldn't vote for him myself, but yes, I suppose we do all have the right to vote against our own self-interest as individuals, a nation, and a species, and good on you for utilising that right.

Phrase three, well, we can agree to disagree on the method, but yes, the Capitol buildings did need a bit of sprucing up.

And phrase four, you're angry with me, I'm angry with you.

Let's face it, it's the start of a rom-com.

On the 1st of June 1495, John Cor,

a Scottish monk, recorded the first known batch of Scotch whiskey, a true landmark for human civilisation, the first ever Scotch whisky.

1st of June 1495, and the 2nd of June 1495.

John Corr, the monk, apologised to the other monks in the monastery for anything you might have said to them the previous night, for waking them up at 4am singing, show me the way to go home, very loudly in the cloisters, and for vomiting at breakfast.

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

This week, a bugle science supplement, a special supplement, a new bugle science magazine entitled Wiscua, which stands for what if something completely unfeasible actually happened.

We look at what would happen if a crocodile became pope, if waterfalls stopped working and the water just carried on the way it was going instead of falling downwards.

We look at what would happen if a large hadron collider in Switzerland went wrong and started pumping out a million cubic meters of molten marshmallow every hour.

What would happen if an asteroid the size of Manhattan and an asteroid the size of Brooklyn collided in the sky above Queens?

The science suggests that the Brooklyn asteroid would end up relocating to Los Angeles.

It's like baseball all over again.

And we also look at what would happen if the rule of three became the rule of five.

And in our special whisk skewed our hit put section, that is what if something completely unfeasible did actually happen in the past, special features by the science and non-science correspondent from the Daily Telegraph, Erwin Splutteridge, including Was the Titanic Sunk by a Leftist Woke Conspiracy?

And how millennial political correctness stopped Isaac Newton from discovering nuclear fusion.

That section is in the bin.

Andy, sometimes I think you would make more sense to me if you were a written almanac.

Like instead of a human man, you were a leaflet that was handed out with tons of information on it.

Right.

I mean, information is one way of putting it.

You might have to miss a facilitator on the front of that.

Almanacs tend to have facts in them.

That's the thing.

Almanacs have facts in them.

That's the major difference.

Yes.

I don't know.

What would be a false or a Fulmanac?

I don't know.

Well, don't ask us for the pun.

I mean, that's.

Top story this week, the future of humanity.

Well, we're looking at various things that are going to affect the way we live as a species.

In particular, the quest for eternal life.

Because this week in Vampire News, it has emerged that Brian Johnson, the American tech billionaire, guzzled gallons of blood directly from the veins of his infant son.

Well, it was a transfusion a litre or so, and his son is a teenager, and he also

himself, Brian Johnson, blasted some of his own blood cells, plasma and billionaire juice into his elderly father.

But still, Brian Johnson is, to all intents and purposes, a vampire.

And it just goes to show, Chris and Hari, what happens when someone has not so much more money than sense, but so much money that it is impossible to have any sense left whatsoever.

I mean,

this is,

I mean, it's quite an extraordinary, extraordinary story.

I mean, have either of you, you've both got children,

as has producer Chris.

I mean, strictly between us,

have you ever looked at your kids and thought, I can harvest you and become immortal?

I mean, if you can't use your kids' blood for whatever purposes you deem fit, what was the point of becoming a parent to begin with?

Justify.

Brother.

Yep.

That's fair.

It's a huge paradigm shift.

This is the first time having a kid can make you feel younger.

First of all, right, what is the point in searching for eternal youth at this stage of human history?

This is the curtain call, right?

We are leaving the stage shortly.

If you really want to live longer at this point you need to be concentrating on finding a way of stopping ai because it is five years

until we are all dead from ai dogs with guns on their heads roaming the streets seeking out humans and second of all this guy is spending two million dollars a year andy trying to regain his youth have you seen him it looks like someone left tom hiddleston out of the fridge for a couple of days and he's begun to go off not quite a lucky lucky more a low-key likey but in any case there are far cheaper ways of living forever.

Look at David Attenborough, right?

Still fit and active in his mid-90s, and he's achieved that by simply never changing out of a light blue short-sleeved shirt and beige chinos for the last six decades.

In any case, age is simply a matter of how you measure it.

If you measure your youth by how far off retirement you are, right, then what with governments constantly raising the state retirement age and the cost of living crisis eating into your pension pot, you have meaning you have to work longer, you're effectively getting younger all the time anyway, yeah, for no money.

There you go.

I mean, also with Attenborough, one of the reasons he stayed alive to,

I think he's 140 now, is because every time he's filmed something for one of his programmes, after filming, he boils down the animals in

the

documentaries for stock and drinks their life force.

And it also stops the turning system when it really happens on set.

So,

yeah, I mean, he's essentially functionally immortal through the medium of soup.

Can we refer to him as Dracula Dad from now on instead of Johnson?

Sorry, Dracula Dad, yeah.

Okay, that applies to many Johnsons, to be honest.

He spends shitloads of money on strange procedures to achieve unending physical youthfulness, also to try and achieve his lifelong ambition of becoming a character in a Greek myth who exists as a warning to all humanity about the dangers of human arrogance and stupidity.

And he's well on the way to achieving that goal, but probably before he achieves

eternal life.

I mean, £2 million a year.

Yeah.

I mean, if I had that kind of money to spend on personal grooming, I think I'd spend $25,000 having a beak attached to keep the plague away and the rest replacing my legs with diamond-encrusted pogo sticks.

But each to their own.

I mean,

what would you guys do?

I know, Hori, you do spend, well, I mean, probably only around about a million a year on personal grooming.

On hair alone, of course.

But I think we should look at the actual numbers, because there are numbers that

we've gotten from Dracula Dad.

Dracula Dad and his doctors, who he pays money to,

claim his overall biological age has been decreased by over five years.

He is a 45-year-old with a heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old.

the fitness of an 18-year-old, but sadly still has the self-consciousness of a 15-year-old.

And also there's a danger in going too far back there.

Right.

Isn't that, you know, if you're going down 37, 28, 18, 50, when you go too far, you do not want to, you know, as a billionaire, you don't want to wake up screaming in the middle of the night every night, crying uncontrollably, having pissed and shat yourself.

Exactly what he's trying to avoid by getting old, but if he gets too young, it'll essentially have the exact same thing.

There is one great irony in this because

in the article, it claims that his scientists say that his penis, quote, functions as it would if he was an 18-year-old.

So to review, this means he's now a 45-year-old who deals with premature ejaculation.

Like, that is...

That is the claim that they have publicly stated.

It's a fair point, right?

Why do you even want to be 17, let alone a baby?

If he's trying to have the body of his 17-year-old son, I suppose the good news for the rest of us is that if he achieves that, he'll no longer be eligible to vote.

Why would you want to be 17 again?

You'd have to do your A-levels, you'd have to get a job on Saturdays in our price records, which would be very hard to do because they went out of business in 2004.

You'd be eligible for the poll tax, and you'd spend far too much time looking through film magazines for pictures of Winona Ryder.

No, thank you very much.

I'll stick to my 50s, the ability to afford decent wine, and typing Winona Ryder 90s into Google Image Search.

But $2 million a year.

I mean he's clearly very worried about wrinkles if you look at

his face.

If you're spending $2 million a year on personal grooming, with that money you could

pay for not only a sensational range of vintage cricket memorabilia, and I'll say that without a hint of jealousy, but you could also pay for 250 wells in deprived parts of the world providing clean water to half a million people.

So no wonder he's worried about wrinkles because i mean most of us make such choices in life to a certain extent but if you're doing that you must wake up hating yourself every finging morning that's gonna that's gonna that's gonna make you frown isn't it so i can i can sort of see why he's why he's i don't know that he's got the personality or self-awareness to do that because

It always strikes me that the people searching for eternal life, whenever these people turn up in the media, they're always the most boring people imaginable.

Every single one of them, kind of person you try to lose early doors on a stag.

People need to realize in general that, you know, aging is a fascinating experience in and of itself.

Lots about it can surprise you.

For example, I would never have believed when I was younger that once I got to middle age, I would have to spend quite so much of my time reading about the crackpot science schemes of white boy tech gazillionaires.

Bezos,

Zuckerberg, this idiot.

It's like they all saw Wallace and Bromitt and thought it was a series of training films.

I reckon we are six months max off that guy from Spotify announcing that he's going to build Time Machine.

I much preferred it in the old days when evil billionaires were more interested in building secret underground volcano lairs, which by definition they couldn't keep crapping on about on Twitter.

Well, I mean,

we have to wrap up this section really with an opinion piece in The Bugle Says.

This is the real truth from The Bugle.

Personally, at the Bugle, we have no problem with Brian Johnson doing this.

People criticise billionaires for earning more money than the average human being can comprehend.

So at least do something fing weird with it.

Fair play to him.

And look, let us ask ourselves a question.

At heart, are we not all vampires?

Who amongst us has not stood over the cot of our sleeping progeny, or indeed someone else's sleeping prodigy, and felt the urge, the primeval compulsion, the evolutionary necessity indeed, rise within us before we succumb to the unquenchable cravery of our dark souls and slake our thirst on the youthful blood of a youth before washing it down with a sweet little pint of plasma and a bone marrow cleanser.

Just me on that one?

Anyway, what we need is not fewer Brian Johnson's, but more.

I want him cloned, drinking the blood of all children.

Moving on to other future of humanity news, it's not just 45-year-old tech billionaires who are having their entire fundamental nature changed by science, but babies as well.

Hari, you are our designer babies correspondent.

Yeah.

And you alloted to this new branch of fertility science, IVG in vitro gametogenesis.

Just explain.

I know you love three-letter acronyms and love explaining them.

So just explain exactly what IVG involves and why it's going to make our species even better than it already is.

Okay, I'm going to speak in layman's terms because I only speak in layman's terms.

But basically, freaks...

Basically, freak scientists found a way to take any cell and turn it into a sex cell.

So they can take two of my cells and turn one into an egg and one into a sperm, and then I can make my own child with all my genetic material, which for an egomaniac is perfect.

Apparently, the field of bioethics does not have a big sway.

It's clear to me that nobody's listening because this is going to lead to trouble.

Some circumstances include a mother that could be a 90-year-old because you're just taking someone's cell.

It could be a nine-month-old fetus.

which it would be very hard to listen to your mother if that was the case, if she was only nine months older.

You could also take any random cells from anybody.

So, for example, if I bumped into Tom Holland and got some of his skin cells, I could have a baby with Tom Holland without him knowing.

And that kid would then star in the film Fat Spider-Man.

So that's Tom Holland, the actor you're talking about, rather than Holland, the historian.

Right.

Correct.

The actor.

Unlike your humor, I'm not just reaching for just you, Andy.

I'm going for the large.

Zing.

Zing.

So I can feel another band coming up.

In theory, you could also, if someone sat on a toilet seat, you could take that toilet seat and then make children from what you find on the toilet seat.

So let's say hypothetically, this is hypothetical, you were to get a toilet seat that John Oliver sat on, right?

You could then have John Oliver back on the podcast, or at least some freak hybrid of you and John back on the podcast.

Right.

Then my notes here say Andy makes pun with John's name and his name.

I mean, the thing is, I mean, that's very hypothetical because John Oliver no longer uses any kind of bathroom facilities, as I believe they're known in America, because he's so busy at a special surgical operation that means that

he no longer has time for that.

He doesn't have time for the bugle, no longer has time for

functions like that to

The procedure, I believe, is called human centipede and is the reason he is behind a desk.

So, custom making human ovuloidals and spermatica in a laboratory using any cell from a person's body.

Obviously, this could have huge beneficial impacts on fertility treatments.

Clearly, there are deep-seated ethical issues involved.

But equally obviously, everyone is now thinking mad scientists makes baby out of cells stolen from celebrities, celebrity baby grows up to rule the world and destroy and or save humanity so i mean we we want to see how this pans out so ethically should we not be jumping on board we wait wait wait wait wait we want to see how this pans out

no we don't want to see how this pans out did you did you read dr barot and was like let's see how this pans out

i think i i don't know i don't know about that because you know We're lacking certain details here, aren't we?

To what degree will we be able to design these babies, right?

Will we be able to remedy some of the things that human evolution has so far bafflingly overlooked?

For example, would we finally be able to create human beings with pockets?

Every parent knows that leaving a house with a baby is a huge production number.

What a boon to have a pack a couple of spare nappies and some pseudocreme in the baby itself.

What parent hasn't struggled to mix up baby formula with one hand whilst holding their child with the other?

Could we perhaps design these babies so that they're magnetic, so that when it's time to make their food they can be stuck on the fridge out of the way what sleep deprived parent wouldn't want the middle of their screaming baby's forehead to feature a mute button come to that could we not simply equip them with a snooze function how much further and more specific could we go with this voice could we design babies with a left leg considerably longer than its right leg to make it naturally easier to reach difficult shots in snooker Could we help solve the transport crisis by designing babies with propellers coming out of the tops of their heads?

Could we design a baby that with one incredibly thin orange wedge-shaped thumb so that they can prize apart stuck Lego bricks by themselves instead of their parents having to spend cumulatively three months of their lifetimes doing it?

Let's not throw this designer baby out with this designer bathwater, hurry.

That's what I'm saying.

Testify.

You do realize that there's an existential threat.

to stand-up comedians if this technology exists.

Because this is what we have is recessive.

This is not a dominant trait.

This is something that would immediately be eliminated.

Like, this is the worst thing that could possibly happen.

Well, also, I mean, if you can, you know, take cells

from different people, presumably you could take cells from lots of different people.

And, you know, comedy increasingly over the last 20 years has had more and more people doing shows about their relationship with their father,

their parents.

And if suddenly comedians have, you know, thousands of parents, they'll just be churning out these fing shows

until

until all comedy just dies on the inside so um

and that will then spawn fat spider-man the music

uh they are they do say that the you know widespread application of this science uh in humans does remain quite a long way away but they said that about the internet in the 17th century and look at us now caught caught inescapably in its virtual grasp watching the future we could have had evaporate like a sausage in a snowstorm but

for me politically politically um i think it's quite exciting because like i said you could presumably take bits of cells from all eight billion people in the world and put them together in one embryo and thus create the average person and thus politically we would finally know what the average person does genuinely think and this could lead to a you know a golden age of of of politics i think

or exactly the opposite

the thing that the thing that worries me slightly slightly about it and that backs up Hari's concern about seeing how this pans out is that

one of the scientists who's leading this research said, and this, by the way, is a direct quote.

He said, we are in the pathway of translating these technologies into the humans.

Let me just restate that.

We are in the pathway of translating these technologies into the humans.

The

humans.

I do think that any scientist or indeed anyone else in a position of power who refers to the humans should probably not be allowed anywhere near these world's changing technologies.

The only people who talk like that are bond villains and daleks.

It's such a dead giveaway.

Where did you even learn the language?

Does Duolingo have an English for evil scientists course?

Other dead giveaways include having an assistant called Igor referring to female visitors to your lab as my pretty and holding up a smoking vial of purple liquid shouting, now the world shall know my name.

I mean, my pretty's taken on a whole different language

after

political events in Britain with our former home secretary.

Oh, God.

I mean, we also have to consider

the great things the government could do with such technology.

You could, in a lab, take the best human traits that

a government

finds preferable.

Let's say it's a conservative government, right?

And you take all the best traits and you create a sort of like

a race, like a top, like a master race.

You create like a master race

that will then look exactly the way you want it.

The point I'm making is

apparently Hitler was ahead of his time.

And if he could just be here now, it would be completely reasonable and be done without bloodshed.

His dream of a master race.

According to the article on the NPR side, a Japanese scientist claimed to have perfected this process in mice.

And I'm quoting directly from the article now.

The researchers use cells from the tails of adult mice to create induced pluripotent stem cells, IPS cells, and then coaxed those cells to become mouse, sperm, and eggs.

Coaxed?

That is not,

to me, that is a non-scientific.

come on, little IPS cell.

Who wants to be a sperm cell?

You want to be a sperm cell?

Or do you want to be an egg?

You want to be an egg.

Look at you, you cheeky little thing.

You're blushing.

You want to be an egg?

Egg, egg, egg, egg, egg.

Slight insight into my parenting methods for you there, Bugless.

But, I mean, for me, this could be one of the most exciting breakthroughs in human reproduction since God realized there must be a better way of making new people than ripping someone's rib out whilst they're asleep, popping the rib into a giant test tube, saying abracadabra, and hoping for the best.

I just want to clarify that

I am anti-Hitler.

All right.

In case that wasn't clear earlier, in case people.

Imagine having an anti-Hitler.

Let your anti-Hitler speak.

I don't think that's a good idea at all.

I think we have to be careful though, because the existence of designer babies implies the inevitable existence of knockoff designer babies.

Ah,

ones that you get down the market next to the store, selling Louis Vuitton bags and Golce and Dabana belts for a fiver, cash only.

Problem with the cheaper designer babies is you never really know what you're getting.

Two days after you take them home, one of the arms comes loose or you realize its head's stuck on the wrong way.

After a couple of years, when it starts to talk, it turns out it can only speak Slovenian, which is fine if you're Slovenian, but surprisingly, few people out of the total human population are.

To be fair, aren't we knockoff designer babies?

Speak for yourself, sorry.

I'm one of God's chosen people.

I haven't read the book, but I've heard it's quite popular.

In other future news, obviously with all these very worrying trends emerging, we are going to have to find ways of poisoning our children so they don't have to deal with it.

One of these that we developed recently is vaping.

But it's now turned out that, well, people are getting a little concerned about the extent to which we are poisoning children through

the poisonous gases in vaping.

The vaping community has been rocked to its sweetly scented foundations by research that found high levels of lead and nickel in vaping products.

And, I mean, sadly, it's turned out that selling something highly addictive containing poisonous chemicals to children, which might have serious adverse effects on their short and long-term health, might be having serious adverse effects on their short and long-term health, which is something that you couldn't possibly have known without the benefit of either hindsight or foresight.

So, I mean, this is a concern, isn't it?

Because obviously, the Roman Empire collapsed because everyone started drinking too much lead.

And we love copying the Roman Empire right to the

we're basically modeling ourselves at the moment on the decline and fall of a once mighty civilization.

And now we're jumping on the get that lead in your bloodstream bandwagon that the Romans so skillfully piloted.

It's uh, I mean, I do either of you

do we do you vape?

No, I'm an adult.

That is beautiful and brutal.

Yeah.

It's ridiculous.

Yeah.

Why?

I mean, again, this is just like when we found out smoking?

You're telling me breathing these fire sticks in is going to harm us?

Like, this was obvious.

You're breathing in chemicals with a plastic tube.

Yeah, there might be some health risks.

I don't understand why this story,

it's almost like they made it to the market fast enough where people allowed it until questions were asked, like, huh, breathing in these chemicals in a plastic tube, could this hurt our children?

And then the research was done.

It's like, yeah, our suspicions were in fact right, that breathing in chemicals with a plastic tube could be harmful to children.

There are some really disturbing statistics about the number of children who do it.

There's a rise in this country, in the UK, there's a rise in vaping amongst 11 to 17-year-olds from 7.7%

last year to 11.6%.

But there are other statistics that are more encouraging.

So, for example, the number of people who look absolutely fing ridiculous vaping hasn't risen since last year's figures of 100%.

The number of men who haven't quite realized that enveloping themselves in a big cloud that smells of strawberry and cream flavor does somewhat play against the image they're trying to promote with the Mexican death head they've had tattooed on the back of their hands, also remains at a pretty much the same level of astonishingly high.

Well, yeah, I mean, I guess you know, we've been

burnt previously by the suppression of health science and you know, those scientific reports from the turn out to be covertly funded by the cigarette industry that revealed, for example, that filterless lung scrunchers are the equivalent of a Mediterranean salad, and that smoking 160 high-tar artery cloggers a day makes you fitter than an Olympic cyclist.

Those turned out to be not entirely true.

And I mean, children now, as you say, I mean, they are marketed aggressively at children with

these flavours very popular amongst school children, such as strawberry milkshake, raspberry beret, fear of failure, the sweet, sweet nectar of knowledge, and odor Michael Gove, for those children who miss Michael Gove as their former education secretary in the UK.

Are we not sending mixed messages to our children though?

We're sort of clamping down on these

addictive products.

Because vast amounts of advertising, whether it's in sport or elsewhere, are telling us adults to get addicted to things that will do us harm.

For example, gambling, alcohol, medication, debt, fresh-smelling laundry, love, funerals, and hope for a better future.

But as soon as we find a quick, efficient way of hooking the next generation of children onto something that will ruin their lives, we try to stop them doing it.

I don't get the logic myself.

I think we need more ways to get our children addicted and therefore controllable.

Otherwise, who knows what utopias they may unleash on us as we get old?

I mean, I'm mostly concerned with the idea that they might be damaging their bodies, and then we're not going to be able to use their cells to make more children or drink their blood to live forever.

This goes against everything that we've been trying to do with science.

Quite right, Harry.

American news now and well, America running out of money update.

The US Treasury is expecting to run out of all cash by the 5th of June.

It will then just have to ask to borrow s stuff just from people hanging around just offering to like borrow $10 to pay for the entire

state education system and things.

I mean a horrible it's again w we we touch on America running out of cash, it seems, on a on on an on an annual basis.

And you know, the defining doctrine of American politics is, of course, mutually assured failure between the Democrats and the Republicans.

Will America ever learn how to manage its finances, or is this just something that we now live with, this sort of annual financial basis?

No, it will never learn to manage.

It doesn't need to.

This isn't a country in the developing world.

This isn't Greece.

If we don't want to pay back the debts,

we'll just get rid of the debt ceiling and add more money.

Or we'll not do that and then we'll default and that'll just hurt

poor people.

So that works for America.

If we want money, eventually people will let us borrow it because we have nuclear weapons.

and very big and

can hurt them if they don't give us what we want.

As well as if we really wanted to hurt the world, we could

deny them American popular culture,

which would be devastating.

And so as a result,

this is just procedural

bargaining position, essentially.

Well, they're going to suspend it till 2025.

And so

it's just drama.

It's just like the, I mean, the only real cost is to poor people in America because eventually the Republicans will have to settle, the Democrats will have to settle and to keep it under the cap,

they're going to have to cut programs, not military spending, which will go up, but

social welfare benefits.

That's usually what ends up happening.

It's basically like if you ate a pizza for breakfast and then a pizza for lunch.

And then you had a snack of a full pizza and dinner with a full pizza.

And you had dessert with every single one of those meals.

So lunch dessert, breakfast dessert, snack dessert.

And then you start counting the calories and it reaches a number you didn't know calories could get to.

And at which point you decide, you know what?

The salad has to go.

Because that's the feather that will topple everything over.

And that's what it is like to do this every year.

So, I mean, how could America

raise money?

Because there are rumors that the Louisiana purchase could be reversed, that France could buy back the 828,000 square miles that it sold to America in 1803 for twice the original purchase price of $15 million.

So, I mean, I guess that would, you know, that could be worth it.

Yeah, and it would also, you know, give France somewhere.

a larger area over which to have race riots.

Yep.

Well, I mean, they'd be competing race riots because there might be race riots happening in the US while the French riots are being imported in.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I imagine there's a whole lot of tariffs that have to be discussed about that.

Well, they've done the deal, though, Andy.

That's the thing.

You know,

President Joe, I can't remember what I was just talking about, Biden,

and Speaker Kevin, please let me be Speaker.

Please, please, please, let me

go on this McCarthy did come to a deal.

But even so, like shitting bears, they are not out of of the woods.

The House of Representatives and the Senate have to approve it.

McCarthy and Biden's dealers are likely to get the approval they so badly need from Congress as Donald Trump is likely to get the approval he so badly needs from his dead since 1999 father.

The U.S.

Treasury Secretary, Annette Shee Yellen, has warned that, as you say, if the deal isn't passed by June the 5th, the government will be out of money.

But we've all been there, haven't we?

It's only the beginning of the month, right?

But your bank balance is already perilously low.

You have to make some adjustments if you're going to make it to payday.

And with that in mind, I've asked the Bugle's financial editor for a list of top money-saving tips for keeping the American economy open in the cost of living crisis.

So one, sell unwanted items.

We've all got stuff that we've accumulated over the years that we don't really need anymore, but could get us a bit of extra cash if we eBay them.

For example, Puerto Rico.

Do you really need American Samoa?

and Guam or could one of them be sold to get the money to, for example, put metal detectors in schools?

Two, don't get all your fruit and veg at the supermarket.

Tons of money can be saved if you grow your own, say, tomatoes and salad.

You don't need a big garden.

You can sew them in any little unused space like Marjorie Taylor Green's head or the bit where Mitch McConnell's heart is supposed to be.

Three, we all need to get out and do stuff.

It's good for our mental health.

But it might be time to cancel expensive trips to Hamilton or date night at Hooters and swap them for things that don't cost anything like speaking at the UN General Assembly or sending thoughts and prayers.

Or cancel Netflix.

Five, cut out alcohol.

Can be hard to do, but these days there are plenty of substitutes for beer like mocktails or Budweiser.

Six, and if you've done all that and you still need to save, then why not get a part-time job?

Nothing too taxing.

Maybe you could get an early morning paper round or grab a couple of shifts a week, destabilizing a South American country with a vaguely socialist government.

You'll be out

in no time.

Witchcraft news now, and while American justice has raced into action, lawmakers in Connecticut have exonerated 12 people

almost 400 years after they were convicted of witchcraft.

Now, I guess better late than never, although for the 11 of those 12 who were executed, 370 years late and never are not really too far apart on the spectrum of injustice.

I mean, how is there a danger that these lawmakers will be seen in the current political climate of going soft on witchcraft by just doling out these pardons?

Well, absolutely, because shortly after the exoneration, 12 bats appeared at the courthouse and changed into people.

And one said, oof, thank God that's over.

So, yeah, it's not going to look good.

I mean, what was interesting about this case is that the Senate in Connecticut voted 33 to 1 to exonerate the people convicted in the 1600s.

One senator, Rob Sampson, voted against, saying he believed that it was wrong to, quote, dictate what was right or wrong about periods in the past that we have no knowledge of.

I guess you could slightly take issue with the idea that we have no knowledge of the 17th century.

A few historians might slightly dispute that.

Also, I think Boris Johnson is probably relying on the same principle, essentially, that we can't dictate what was right or wrong about peers in the past that we have no knowledge of, just for stuff that happened three to four years ago, not three to four hundred years ago.

What is a couple of noughts between friends?

Also, I mean, I come at this from a Jewish perspective.

Is it not time to respect controversial judicial verdicts passed according to the laws of the time, rather than banging on about how one guy might have been found innocent if he'd been tried under today's legal system?

We have to respect the judicial decisions of the past.

Also, I mean, there's a bit of a difference, isn't there?

Because you have presidential pardons in America, which is essentially legalized crime,

depending on the whims of departing presidents, for people who've done actual crimes.

But saying sorry to someone who was hanged in the 17th century because they looked funnily at a hedge or wore the wrong sock or turned flour into bread just by baking it within a mile of where a frog might have been,

that's not not okay.

That seems inconsistent to me, America.

But I don't know, I think it's just nice to see America taking women's rights seriously for a change.

If campaigners hope that in 370 years they'll get around to federal protection of abortion,

so warlocks are

did they ever go?

Did warlocks ever go to trial, or was it just witches?

No,

I bet you it's the warlocks that sold the witches out.

It's always the way, isn't it?

I can't get out of this marriage

oh god that's really dark

and almost certainly true

i guess what we can learn from this story uh once again uh as from pretty much any study of history is that uh a lot of people in the past were absolute

there's your new t-shirt right there

well that brings us to the end of uh this week's bugle it's been a pleasure having you both back on after prolonged hiatuses.

Sorry, I don't know how long your ban is going to be at this time, but where can our listeners hear you in the meantime?

Well first I released a special on YouTube called Vacation Baby.

It is available for everyone for free, but I also released

a longer version and an album on Bandcamp, which I call Extended Vacation Baby.

I actually did it just because I like the name.

It's like 25 minutes longer, and it's 12 bucks.

And I realize money is tight, so if you only can see the free one, that's fine.

Just remember that I am the father of a small child.

But no pressure.

Also, I'll be touring

through June, June 2nd and 3rd, which will be this weekend, in Chicago, Illinois.

June 6th, I'll be in Bugle Stronghold, Morgantown, West Virginia.

June 7th, Columbus, Ohio.

June 8th, Louisville, Kentucky.

June 9th, Cincinnati, Ohio.

June 28th, Buffalo, New York.

And then June 29th, in shows that are surprisingly almost sold out, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

And all that can be found on hurrykundabolu.com, but more likely, you will Google Hurry, Indian Comedian, and figure it out.

Chris, have you got anything to plug?

uh i don't really have anything to plug we've just finished filming the last uh season of breeders uh

and um

that'll be on the telly eventually but the the first three are available on fx on hulu in the states and now tv and sky tv in the uk and wherever you get your quality program

You'll be able to hear me banging on about cricket from this Thursday for months.

Yeah, when do you start?

Thursday, England, Ireland.

Chris will be coming to support both teams, I presume we.

Excellent.

Well, sort of.

Also, the news quiz is heading towards the end of our second series of the you can find that on BBC Sounds or after a bit of a delay elsewhere.

Thank you for listening once again, Buglers.

We will now play you out as Chris puts on his Cricket Island cap.

We will play you out with more from the Bugle Wall of Fame,

commemorating the great contributions to human culture and advancement made by Bugle voluntary subscribers albeit advancements that I have made up and credited to them to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme to give a one-off or a current contribution to help keep the show free flourishing and independent go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button

all of our voluntary subscribers on the wall of fame this week played key roles in the evolution of popular board games foremost amongst them Antony Iacovoni, who made Monopoly the popular game it is today by suggesting to its makers that it be set in modern London rather than in the uninhabited prehistoric wetlands that were where the city now stands today.

There really wasn't much property speculating to be done unless you were a newt, notes Antony.

Michael Swift suggested that chess become a monarchy rather than a theocracy, having become tired of it being nothing but priests moving diagonally and telling pawns they weren't allowed to do anything or go anywhere.

Eric Tullus enhanced the popularity of the detective-based intrigue of Cluedo, also known as Clue, by prohibiting the violent interrogations that were an integral part of the original version of the game.

It just made it much more family-friendly, says Eric.

And Gwynne Morrisse also helped Cluedo establish itself as a much-loved member of the board game Pantheon by persuading the makers that they did not have to include an actual corpse in the box, even if the corpse was only one of a mouse dressed up as a man and not of an actual man.

Bjorn Leonard was the stickler who insisted that only correctly spelled words should be allowable in Scrabble, bringing some order to the high-scoring chaos that existed in the early years of the game.

The modern classic Catan has Jasek Shiraski to thank for its success.

Originally the uninhabited island of Catan was populated with poisonous bats, feral bears and flesh-rending pelicans, not to mention regular outbreaks of plague, meaning that the early settlers all died within two moves.

Jasek suggested making it less realistic, but more playable.

Nick Rosansky turned trivial pursuit into the smartasses game of choice by advocating printing questions on cards, rather than using a cardboard Ouija board to solicit questions and answers from from the dead.

It could be fun, says Nick, but it could also degenerate into guessing whether Mildred had had an affair with Eric in the 1920s.

Whilst admiring the ethos behind the original version of Risk, entitled Trade and Treaty, Simon Heap realised that acquisitive military imperialism was more fun as an after-dinner pursuit than hacking out mutually beneficial trading arrangements and shared product standards.

Matt Robinson was travelling around China a few thousand thousand years ago and helped make go into the eternal classics still played today by suggesting that the playing pieces should be discs rather than spheres and that the board should be flat, not on a slope.

And finally, Ergo Ojasu made backgamon the global phenomenon it is today by arguing that, regardless of tradition, the board did not actually have to be made of actual gammon or indeed any other pig meat product.

Erju notes it opened up whole whole new markets for both religious and climatic reasons.

Thank you to our wall of famers and to all of our voluntary subscribers.

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 you get your podcasts right now.