Happy Bugling Birthday! With John Oliver

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to another special sub-bugle to celebrate 15 years of the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world.

In this episode, I'll be talking with the person with whom I shared the Bugleverse verse for eight years and almost 300 full episodes of this audio newspaper.

The one and only John Oliver.

Hello, John.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

What an honor it was to share the bugle with you for eight years, Andy.

It was like being on an international space station.

What?

But on the ground and in two different countries.

Honestly, that metaphor fell apart instantly.

Bruh.

But it's still one of the most moving things anyone's ever said to me, John.

It was just a sense of being in a very confined space.

Does that matter?

Just the remorseless futility and claustrophobia.

Yeah, the kind of aggressive silence occasionally.

Yeah, that made you feel like you were truly alone in the universe.

It's a glorious eight years.

Well, I mean, I like to think that that probably mirrored the aggressive silence we had at, for example, our Edinburgh preview in York.

I believe so.

I think I've had a lasting appreciation for for the different kinds of silence due to the work that we were able to do live together.

I think we can always tell this isn't an interested audience, this is an apathetic audience, this is a very angry audience which is about to vocalize it.

In York, I believe you had all three happening at once on different tables in York, I think.

And unforgettably, of course, the space in Docklands,

2004, the night England lost to Portugal on penalties in the European Championship.

That was a silence very much caused by no one else being left in the room.

That's right.

After the entire audience had walked out.

What it was, it was the most natural sound that that room has ever produced.

It was really just the walls that were emitting their kind of silence as

our voices were echoed back

from the flat surfaces in that room.

Voices at that point saying, shall we still continue?

At what point are we just entertaining each other?

And of course, the answer to that was at all points.

And that was very much the joy of podcasting, it gave a vehicle for people who could only entertain each other.

Exactly.

It removed

removed the problem contextualization that an audience could provide.

So that was 2004.

The bugle came into being, if I've done my maths rightly, 2022 minus 15, in 2007.

So let's go back in time.

Yeah, let's leave the stats to me, John.

Let's go back in time to

2007.

Now, at that point, you had already left the United Kingdom to try and crack it as a goaltender in the NHL, if I remember.

That was the dream.

I was about to host the hit 12th series of Bar Mitzvah or Bust on the BBC.

So, you know, our careers were in different positions than

what they are now.

I mean,

what do you remember of

your early time in America, those early

bugle episodes?

Let's just gloss over the fact that I don't think I can make it in the NHL now.

I think the Bar Mitzvah or Bus dream, there's no need for that to be dead.

That's as good an idea now as it was then.

Right.

Sorry, what was the question?

I was so focused on Bar Mitzvah or Bus

and just what potentially that game show, if it is a game show, I don't know how you've envisioned it.

would involve reality show game show either you

basically you have your bar mitzvah or you renounce Judaism.

I don't know what the bus counts as in there.

It's a good show.

I'm already interested and you've not explained anything about it to me.

Well, I mean that that's you know you've been in television a long time, John.

You know that a good title can be enough to take a show a very, very long way indeed.

That is true.

One of my earliest, one of my sort of strongest memories of the Bugle was that it was our unbroadcast pilot episode.

This was back in the Times online days and we had various people from

the Times sitting in to see what this new show was.

And

you got stuck into Rupert Murdoch, who at that time basically, I mean, he was de facto owner of the bugle.

And you laid your cards very firmly on the table in episode zero.

I did that in the first one, did I?

Well, it wasn't even the first one, Johnny.

It was before the first one.

It's before the first one.

Wow,

that is a commitment to self-sabotage.

That's uh, honestly, I'm I'm part of me's proud of in retrospect

by biting the hand that literally hasn't fed you yet.

That's

and you know, that the world that the bugle came into, and when we when we started it, I think we had a 13-episode deal and pretty much a blank canvas to do

whatever we wanted.

Yeah, um, I mean, it pretty quickly degenerated into some

fairly childish stuff about

what dead people from history we fancied and

things like that.

But I mean, the world in 2007, John, I mean, Britain had just had a new prime minister foisted on it in an undemocratic fashion.

America was seriously ill at ease with itself and indeed the rest of the world.

I mean, do you feel that the whole thing's just been fing pointless?

I mean, when you put it like that, right,

I hadn't thought about it being pointless, but you know, the futility is such an overwhelmingly convincing argument, to be honest.

Yeah, I guess

it's been a total waste of time.

It's being

the bugle, the concept of laughter, and I guess life on earth.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, that's.

Not a lot to show for the last 15 years, humanity, other than England winning the

Euros, the England women's team.

That's, you know, that's something, right?

Cricket World Cup as well.

There was that.

Yeah.

Yep.

And there was London 2012.

I mean, it can't be coincidence that

you left the country in 2006, and just six years later, we had a glorious Olympics.

That was great, wasn't it?

The Queen really enjoyed that, didn't she?

She did.

In her own way.

In her way of not visibly enjoying anything at all that happened in front of her face.

Are you allowed to say this kind of stuff anymore in England?

In the UK.

I think, I don't know, I think we're still because you can't say anything that might be interpreted as disrespectful to a monarch, however undisrespectful it is, until you've waited the same amount of time that they were on the throne.

So

that's how it works.

We've still got to do another 70 odd years before

we actually say that.

That's the...

Wow, there's going to be a lot of people really hanging in there on life support that should be saying, I have something to say.

It's going to be long and loud, and then I will depart.

But of course, I mean, as we heard in the very moving eulogies to the Queen, she didn't make the Olympics happen on her own.

She built the stadium with her bare hands.

She fired a starter pistol for all the races.

And she played water polo as well.

She did.

Right.

And I believe

got the bronze medal in the decathlon, if I'm remembering that right.

You are remembering that right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's amazing how.

Really fed up the javelin.

That was the problem.

She could have got gold, but yeah.

Kept fouling out on the javelin.

It's amazing how useful a crown is in

the pole vault.

You wouldn't have thought that, but it is.

You wouldn't.

How did she use that?

I can't forget.

I can't remember that, Andy.

Was she kind of slinging it up there?

How does that work?

Like a grappling hook?

Because crowns have a magic force field, don't they?

So it was more that, I think, than anything else.

And that is why India can't have the Kohen or Diamond back, right?

It's the magic.

Yeah,

absolutely.

It's the best argument I've heard for that yet, to be honest.

I mean, in the 15 years since the Bugle started, John, you personally, in your role as America's voice of sanity and reason, have seen off the presidencies of George W.

Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.

Three out of three.

You must be pretty proud of seeing them off.

Well, it's a hat-trick, isn't it?

Yeah.

Credit to term limits at the end of the day.

You know, couldn't have done it without them.

But yeah, still, you know, a win's a win.

Yeah.

And one thing that we didn't touch on in the bugle, because

it happened sort of in the middle of the regeneration period between you leaving to devote your life to the Lord Jesus and

the bugle being reborn.

Oh, Mr.

Robust till I die.

The bugle being reborn

with non-John Oliver co-hosts.

Brexit happened.

And

I mean, you've not really been back here much since then, have you?

Even just, you know, just to

have a visit.

I mean, what have you made of it from Brexit from afar of Brex-Britannia?

I mean, as we've discussed, as a fan of self-sabotage, I mean, Brexit really is

absolutely

the gold standard, isn't it?

It's basically a nation committing Harry Carey for no clear reason.

Freedom, said Braveheart, as he plunged a sword into his own stomach,

knocked off his own nadges.

Yeah, I haven't.

I presume, Andy, that it's going great.

And that

really, I mean, I saw something about the pound not being technically a currency anymore, but I'm sure that's just

the technicality because I haven't finished scrubbing off the Queen's face and drawing on the King Charles's face yet.

So

it certainly is in a hiatus.

So

that's nothing to do with Brexit.

I mean, Brexit,

whether or not it's a success very much depends on how you measure it.

And if you measure it through things like facts and reality, then you could construct an argument that it's not worked.

But if you just measure it by that intangible feeling

of freedom that you can only get from slower border crossings and restriction on your freedom to move around your home continent, then I think

it's been terrific.

It's really opened up a lot of doors for us to slam in our own faces.

Because you can't slam a door in your face unless the door has been opened.

That's the thing, isn't it?

Well, that's profound.

Yep.

Andy, yeah.

And

yeah, I guess

I've fallen into the trap sometimes of seeing it through the prism of what's happening and what

that means.

But obviously that's a mistake, isn't it?

Sometimes it's better just to close your eyes and imagine things working instead.

Yeah, this is what I've constantly.

All we need to make Brexit work is virtual reality headsets for every single person in the United Kingdom.

And then we can just live in the reality we want.

It's like when a team goes 6-0 down before half-time.

At half-time, you might want to just sit down and think, but are we 6-0 down?

Or are we actually 6-0 up in a way?

You know, not in any way that I can kind of back up, but in an alternate dimension, maybe this game's going well.

Yep.

Well, there's that to cling to, I suppose.

Yeah.

Talking now specifically about the bugle and your many years on the bugle, any particular highlights for you, but preferably not involving you naked in a hotel room?

I do remember that, Andy.

I mean, look, that wasn't a high point for me.

You could make a really strong case that I didn't need to bring it up.

I think I was worried that you would be able to hear it in my voice.

There was that innate sense of shame and defeat.

So I felt like the least I could do was give you some context for that.

That was certainly a major moment.

I guess I have, I don't know if I'd call them positive memories, but getting to the end of pun runs,

you always feel like

people who finish a marathon and say, I wish I hadn't done that, but I'm glad it's over.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, I see that.

I think when I first learnt about that giant penis being drawn on a roof, that was one of those moments where you think maybe there is a point in humanity and what we leave on the earth.

Sometimes it's those very deep moments of hope and

that come from unexpected sources.

And for me it was a kid drawing a penis on a roof and then never mentioning it to anybody.

Yeah.

I guess we take we find the light in the darkness where we can.

We've had a number of emails sent in from Bugle listeners for this for this episode.

So

we'll just have a few of them now.

This one has come from Adwait Deshmuk, who addresses dear hot rod and dragster.

Yep.

I can't even remember.

Deep cut.

Deep cut.

I can't even remember what it was.

Doesn't matter.

I'm sure there's a reason, and I'm sure if you spent two hours finding that reason out, it wouldn't make sense.

Adwaite says, good to have you back together.

Please keep coming back.

It makes my ears feel good.

You may be reassessing that after this episode.

Over the last 15 years, do you think the world has become crazier or has it always been this crazy?

Are we moving towards a craziness singularity?

That's getting very, very philosophical.

I mean, we're on the on this sort of continuum of craziness is

you have to be you have to be careful, don't you?

Because recency bias is a real thing.

You have people in America now saying America's never been more divided than it is at this point, which does

rather omit the Civil War.

That is Civil War erasure in its grossest form.

Civil War Erasure was one of the most controversial electro-pop bands of the 1980s as well.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, I have missed this.

I don't know if I could articulate what this is, but I've missed it very much.

Oh, good, John.

Thanks.

I'm not sure if the world, is it just revealing more of its of its

truth?

I mean I think it's hard to it's hard to say isn't it?

I think one of the things that's most striking is the world seems to be forgetting some key moments in relatively recent history.

You know when you have the Marcos family back in power in the Philippines and you have Franco appearing in commercials for the Spanish right and Little Miss Mussolini in Italy.

It does feel like this flirtation with fascism

does seem to be the beneficiary of maybe

us forgetting or having the memory dulled over generations of exactly how bad it was.

So yeah, we seem to be repeating mistakes that you're really not supposed to repeat.

Well, I mean, that's, I mean, they keep saying that.

Don't those who are ignorant of history are

condemned to repeat its mistakes.

But really, the only thing we can learn from history, as I'm sure I've said on this show before, is that people will never ever learn from history.

So we need to

hold that lesson

close to it.

I mean, due to the fact that there's this flirtation with fascism, as you say, I mean, is this due to the fact that ordinary flirtation has now become socially much more complex and people are therefore flirting with discredited political philosophies instead?

This is all the fault of me too, John.

That's a hot take, Andy.

I guess you have become an old enough, white enough man to say, you can't do anything in the workplace anymore

and bear in mind my workplace is my own shed with only me in it i think i should know that

yeah no i don't think it's connected to the me too movement andy but um you know history will be the judge right and history's judgment will be something that as you've said we will not learn from in a moment so you know if history makes a sound judgment and no one reads it does that judgment make a sound that's right i guess we'll just have to see what statues are being toppled in 150 years and work it out from there

This one came in from Rolly.

Dear John, Andy, and Chris, in order of time spent regretting playing blue-coloured animated characters in films.

Oh, ouch.

That's a damn thing.

Ouch.

That's a

hit.

A palpable hit.

Chris couldn't be with us.

We've got Paired on the

buttons today.

Rolly says, I've been listening to this podcast since I was 13.

I'm now 22.

What advice would you give to a young adult who's grown up on a pure diet of clean-cut bullshit washed down with the finest hogwash?

Love the show, Rolly.

So

what do you think?

And what would you say to someone who's who's spent nine years listening to this garbage?

That's uh well, that's a good

question, isn't it?

Because I guess, like to your point about uh not having an audience, just having the audience of each other, you don't really have to grapple with the consequences of the fact that people might be growing up on this.

And I guess it really depends whether you think that bullshit has any protein in it.

And I think you and I would fiercely argue yes, I think, but

that is, of course, bullshit.

Yeah, that's a point very well made.

Yes,

it's protein eating itself, essentially.

Yes.

But that's actually quite nutritious.

Paul asks, Hello, Andy and John.

When you started this podcast, were you aware that you were in fact starting a new religion?

That's interesting.

Interesting to describe the bugle as a religion.

I guess that would make you, as someone who disappeared from it, very much the kind of messiah figure.

Or some kind of false prophet.

Well, potato, potato.

Just don't want to be called Messiah, Andy.

I know.

Bad things can happen to messiahs, right?

Yeah.

Yep.

Well, guilty ones.

So

I'm not the Messiah.

No,

that's something a Messiah would say.

Right, okay.

Only you could be the judge.

I wouldn't call that.

I mean, as a religion, we're not tax exempt, right?

And as far as far as I'm concerned,

in America, that is what actually tells you whether you're a religion or not.

So in that case, no.

Okay, right.

So

we're definitely not a religion, which is disappointing.

If we were a religion, then we might have more sway on American politics and ideally end up running the whole thing through a series of covert back-handed deals.

So this came from Lee,

who asks,

15 years, holy shit.

I remember listening to the Bugle in high school.

My question is simple.

Do you both stand by your preferred hotties from history, Florence Nightingale and Joanna the Mad?

Has any new hottie from history come in to steal your hearts, yours in inappropriate historical lust?

Lee?

I'll die on the Joanna the Mad hill.

Yep.

Andy.

Yeah.

No.

Sure.

She's not going to be the easiest person to be around, but

that enigmatic smile is going to drag you back in every time.

As far as I'm concerned.

Going to drag you back in very much like she dragged the corpse of her dead husband around with her for many years after his death.

That's so

hot, though, isn't it?

Yeah, honestly,

I'm yet to see someone who takes that crown.

Are you?

Right.

Have you stumbled upon?

No, no, I've been very faithful to Flow Nye over the years, and I don't see any reason to

change that.

I've been up, in fact, to the...

There's a little museum in

London,

up by Waterloo.

And I do now have a restriction order preventing me from

walking around that museum without trousers.

So, you know, I feel that

my love remains remains strong for the 19th century's hottest nurse.

Should be a Joanna the Mad museum, Andy.

Where kids can drag a doll around.

Bark at things.

Amongst the many emails that were sent in by people who subscribed to the Bugle email,

Dean said, Thank you for 15 years of world-class podcasting.

I've been listening from the beginning.

There are not many things which have remained such a constant in my life.

And it really does mean so much to me.

thank you very much for that uh dean and other similar similar messages um joel asks holy hell

i've been listening since day one honestly it was you guys radio lab and this american life um so i mean that's it's a long time i mean podcasting i don't think either of us have really heard of no podcasting performance

i'd never listened to a podcast until we did one right my sister helen had uh had started hers early earlier in the year.

But I think we've now overtaken in terms of total episodes

blasted out into the audioverse.

Joel asks, when are you going to tour the southern USA again?

Again, stretching it from, I think, to

I'm not sure if

it was.

North Carolina, right?

Oh, yeah, yes.

It was the north of the south.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Also, Joel asked, John, how many ties do you go through in a season?

I assume he means a season of last week tonight rather than a

baseball season or supporting the Mets, just tearing your formal gear to pieces.

That's right.

That's a good question.

I mean, I think I'll repeat ties.

I'll be honest, I wear what is put out for me.

That is a very risky road to go down, John.

That is the Ron Burgundy attitude to go.

I'm a sartorial Ron Burgundy.

You put it down, I'm going to put it on.

If it's in a pile, I'm putting it on my body.

I'm not going to think it.

I'm not going to internalise what it is.

If you asked me after the show, what were you just wearing, I would not be able to tell you.

Andy also asked all, Andy, your hair, what the f?

WTF.

Oh, maybe you mean what the physics, which is really all of his physics with a PH9F.

I make no apologies for that.

I don't think it's...

I mean, I've got more of it left than I thought I would at the age of 48, to be honest.

I was going to say, it's pretty the same, isn't it, Andy?

Yeah.

It might be coming back forward again, I think.

That could be a medical miracle.

Wouldn't be the first for my people.

Chad asks,

John, have you done anything that we might have seen since you left the bugle?

If so, where can we find it?

Was any of it on Quibi?

Which I think might be a little dig at

Nish Kumar, one of your successors, who's...

Oh, really?

Did we have a show on Quibi?

He did have a show on Quibi, quibby and that that show did not last um did do you know that he had it sean quibi or did he say he had sean quibby and it was impossible for anyone to prove him wrong because in a sense everyone had a show on quibby and no one did right okay that was the that was the incredible thing about quibby wasn't it it really made you uh really challenged your sense of what exists and what doesn't so it's a kind of schrodinger's tv channel was it yes exactly that's exactly what it was

i think in fact i think the only thing on Quibi was a dead cat.

Just a lot of six-minute videos of dead cats.

But I think you've kept yourself pretty busy with all the

dancing.

Yeah, I mean, I'm

I'm the world's second favorite Zazoo.

That's not nothing, right?

Right.

Uh that's that's that's a big thing.

That's um yeah, yeah, number

two.

I mean, how many sil silver medal Zazoo?

That's what I mean I I slightly lost track of uh the the total, the final Smurf movie count.

Are they still going?

Or you're not allowed to say?

I think they're still going, Andy.

Right.

Now, is

Vanity Smurf still going?

I don't know.

Again, I haven't seen those first two Smurf movies.

But

I don't know.

Perhaps they've kind of worked out a kind of voice system where I can appear in it for the rest of time, you know, like they do when after people die.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I think there are Smurf movies being made.

I'm not making those Smurf movies, Andy.

So I don't know what that means.

In the canon of the Smurf universe, I think I'd dip my toe in for two motion pictures.

Smurfs and then Smurfs 2.

First one in New York, second one in Paris.

I don't know.

They might have gone

to Bora Bora in the third one.

I don't know.

And there were rumours a while ago I saw that there was going to be a vanity Smurf adaptation of a picture of Dorian Gray.

Is that still on the cards?

Oh, it's so difficult for me to talk about this, Andy.

It's going to be very expensive.

I love the script.

I love the project.

It's not suitable for children at all, which apparently is a problem.

But I think if you're really going to tell the full horror of the Dorian Gray story, and I tried to inject some of that into my portrayal of Vanity Smurf, Andy,

that sense of we're grappling with narcissus in a way.

And so that was there, I believe, in my portrayal.

Other people would say, no, you just made your voice slightly posher and a little bit higher.

Potato, potato.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, that's what is the art of acting, I guess.

That's right.

Yeah.

It's reacting.

And I was reacting to nobody because I was alone in the sound booth.

This question comes from Abra, who asks,

do you think that Silvia Berlusconi has joined the coalition government in Italy in celebration of the Bugle's 15th anniversary?

I mean, is it a touching tribute from former Bugle favourite Silvio?

It's only a question that Silvio can answer, right?

I guess someone looked deep within that withered heart of his to see if.

Yeah, he seems like a man who's not afraid of introspection.

Yeah, who's to say?

I guess ask him.

All right.

Somebody should ask him.

And then just.

We live on the same continent, so

I'll put feelers out.

Shut in your window and yell.

She also asks, what would each of you like as a birthday present for the bugle from Silvio Berlusconi?

And bear in mind, you could basically pinch anything in Italy.

What would you

best birthday present I ever got, Andy, was a whole E-Damn cheese as a kid.

So I like that.

I couldn't believe it.

The whole thing, round, E-Damn cheese.

The whole thing.

I wanted it.

I got it.

And I was glad that I got it.

I've never forgotten just the feeling of wax all the way around.

I cannot believe I have this cheese.

Right.

All of it.

That's a good thing.

A whole E-Dam cheese, huh?

A whole E-Damp.

I just, I know what you're picturing in your head.

I worry that you're picturing a quarter of an E-Dam cheese or a half an E-Dam cheese.

And that's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying a whole

Edam.

A whole channel.

And so, how old were you at this point?

I mean, it must have been sort of the size of your head, wasn't it?

I think it

might have been bigger.

I think I was seven years old.

That's all.

Right.

It's amazing.

I mean, cheese is a huge.

Probably only damn cheese.

Yeah.

I mean, it's a huge part of everyone's life, cheese.

I've had Chris Addison on a few times on the bugle, and we were reminiscing a while ago about

his wedding when

you,

amongst others, goaded me at about three in the morning into eating a chunk of brie

that was inadvisably big.

It was.

I mean, a chunk is just not the right descriptor, Andy, because I think when people picture a chunk of brie, they're not picturing what you ate, which is, yeah, you're right, it's medically unsound.

A doctor would say, Andy,

you can do this, but you shouldn't, and there are going to be ramifications here.

It was absolutely spectacular.

It was a lovely wedding, I imagine.

I've forgotten a great deal of it.

I do remember remember you eating that cheese.

Yes.

Because I remember crying with laughter.

Like tears, a wet face.

Not like one tear, like no distinguishable tears because they were streaming

as I watched you eat, swallow and then struggle.

And basically fully immersed in a breeze sweat.

It's the way I would have wanted to go, albeit that I survived.

Finally, Keith emailed in saying, f ⁇ me, the boys are back in town.

That is how you open an email, Keith.

Doesn't matter where you go from there, you have my full attention.

Congratulations to Andy on 15 years of unrelenting bullshit and commiserations to the bastard who defected Splitter.

Look what you could have won.

I mean, that's true.

If you'd stuck with the bugle, you too could be doing cricket stats on the radio during the summer.

But anyway, Keith had a question.

What subject, John, in the past umpteen years, by umpteen I think he means seven or so since since you stopped playing the bugle would you have wanted to cover on the bugle more than on your own show?

What thing have you do you think you'd have?

What a great question.

Yeah,

I guess it's something that you want to be able to slow down for to give it more time and attention than the subject deserves.

That would be the metric I would consider there.

This is a very long pause for audience.

I'm really gauging in the question.

It was a good question.

I think you've been doing tele too long, John.

That's very much a non-audio-friendly length of gap.

There was a British

family that terrorised New Zealand for a week.

Do you remember that?

There were like British kids who were just on the loose, just

terrorising New Zealand.

I remember

thinking that would be great to talk about for two hours.

A metaphor for modern Britain.

Exactly.

And Keith himself suggested he thought it would probably have been Boris Johnson that you'd have liked to talk.

Marx has talked about that.

Yeah.

We talked about Boris Johnson

on the show here, but

to a sense, it's a little laura diminished in returns.

It's the same thing with Trump, right?

It's so superficially absurd,

it's hard to find anything meaningful underneath it.

He was Prime Minister for

a

justifiably pitiful short amount of time, just under three years.

But it was between you leaving the UK and Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister, that was about 13 years.

I mean, do you think it would have been worth just going anywhere for 16 years to avoid being in Britain whilst Boris Johnson was even if that had been on your own naked in Antarctica?

Would you have taken that just to not be here for those three years?

I think so.

And the thing that would have keep you going in the

darkness

of an Arctic winter,

the unforgiving tundra ahead of you, the wind howling and

your only friend to some extent, it would be having to remind yourself it could be worse.

I could be living in a country suffering under Boris Johnson's impetuous pseudo-charismatic decisions.

Yep.

Well, I think you made the right call there, John.

Well, that brings us to the end of our

audience Q ⁇ A.

Yeah, so, well, I mean, do come back on in 15 years' time for the 30th anniversary.

I'm sure the world will be going great by then.

It really feels to me like the world's about to turn it around.

I really feel like all the chess pieces are in the right position for an attack now yeah well i mean it's like that like bob dylan said in in that song they say the darkest hour is is right before the dawn i mean it's turned out that the darkest hour is generally just before an equally or darker hour uh often uh more full of but but but i mean i think you know his point doesn't stand but let's i mean let's pretend that it does stand there there may be there may be better times around around the corner

yeah maybe

history suggests otherwise, but we don't pay any attention to that, Andy.

I think if the Bugle has done one thing

through its own history, ironically, it's been to ignore history.

And we will continue

historically ignoring history for as long as history allows us to make history.

John, it's been an absolute pleasure.

History will be our judge, Andy.

It's wearing a silly wig and a hammer, and everyone's laughing at it.

It's been a pleasure having you back on.

Pleasure.

Gentlemen, it's been an honor playing with you.

Thanks for your contribution to the last 15 years.

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.