Beauty and the Beast (4194)

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers, it's Monday the 17th of May 2021.

You may, if you are a Britain-based listener, now give your headphones or speaker a hug and it will register as a legal hug for the Bugle podcast, of which this is issue 4194.

And I, Andy Zaltzman, am host, joining me this week, a former resident of A, the same house I lived in, and B, the same womb I lived and worked in for nine months, though not at the same time in the case of B, it's the quibbling sibling, Helen Zaltzmann.

That was your longest office job, wasn't it?

Second longest, Helen.

Second long.

I lasted a full 11 months in the other one.

Wow, full gestation.

Joining us from a strange, faraway place in another world, or at least from another half of this world, if this is indeed a world anymore, it's Alice Fraser.

Hello, Andy.

Yes, indeed, I am in Queensland in Australia, the strangest of Australians, and as far as places go.

Well, Queensland is also here.

Britain, this is the Queens, the Queensland, as indeed is the entire earth by rights.

So to the state of Queensland as it constantly threatens to secede from the rest of Australia.

It is the place in Australia where I get the most culture shock.

It is, and yet it insists it is the most Australian of places.

Right.

I mean, how is that marked?

Is there like a scale of Australian-ness in different categories?

Sort of parochialism and hats.

But we are recording on the 17th of May, on this day in 1756, the Seven Years' War formally began when Great Britain declared war on France and just highlights the gradual shortening of human attention spans that they launched it as the Seven Years' War on the 17th of May 1756.

When you think back just, what, three or four centuries before?

The Hundred Years' War in the 14th to 15th century is already reduced down to a paltry seven by the time they launched in 1756.

And now, just recently, as we reported a couple of weeks ago, the war with France over fishing rights in Jersey was done and dusted in a couple of days.

People today, no f ⁇ ing stamina.

On this day in 1902, the Greek archaeologist archaeologist valerios stais discovered the anikythera mechanism an ancient mechanical analog computer it is a hand-powered orrery and if you don't know what an orrery is it's something that you can't explain and don't really know what it is so you just mumble a noise and try and get away with it it's just an orrery everyone knows that the device has been dated to the first century bjh cammeu which is the jewish system of dating that helen and i were brought up with which stands for before jesus h christ came along and messed everything up expertologists have speculated that the mechanism, which consists of various cranks and gears, and has been described as the earliest known computer, was used by the ancient Greeks to locate the sun, moon, and planets, to play games involving matching up sugary snacks, to anonymously abuse strangers and first-century BC celebrities, and to point to the location of stars, which, if you then use them as a join the dots picture, would look like two people having vigorous but unromantic sexual intercourse.

And on this day in 1990, the General Assembly of the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from the list of psychiatric diseases.

That is 1990 AD, not BC.

That is AD.

That's 21 years after our species had summoned the ingenuity to put a spacecraft that could send data back from the planet Venus, which it did on this day in 1969.

21 years later, the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from the list of psychiatric diseases.

We don't always prioritize as a species.

I think there's some historic

evidence of that.

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

This week, a bugle guide to hugging as hugging becomes legal again in Britain, albeit not compulsory.

Let me emphasise that.

A guide to how to hug friends and loved ones for those who've forgotten how to and become a bit rusty over the last hug-free year.

The Bugle Guide to Hugging.

A.

Minimize growling.

B.

Avoid screaming.

C.

Do not wear arm spurs.

D.

Remember the difference between a hug and martial arts.

Remember, as the old saying goes, judo is not a cuddle.

E.

If running or walking into a hug, remember to stop your forward motion on or shortly before contact with your huggie.

And F, do not attempt to combine your hug with either admin or work, especially if your line of work involves surgery, dispensing advice on military strategy, or operating heavy machinery.

It will at best make your huggy feel awkward.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week: the world is doomed.

Now, I don't think I'm going out on even the most stacks hundreds of limbs when I say that the Middle East situation has been the source of a bit of concern over the past past week.

How many of you enjoyed the latest flare-up

in the Middle East crisis?

Not loving it, Andy.

Yeah.

What's been your particular highlight?

Well,

it seems like

you're not allowed to support the oppressed people of Palestine

whilst not being an anti-Semite.

Right.

But I do hate myself, so it does track.

Well, Andy, I was about to write a bunch of like very hilarious, incisive, and universally unifying comedy about India, China, and the Middle East, as well as the latest abuse scandal in your specific area of interest, whatever it might be.

But then I read this next story and none of it seemed worth it because Chernobyl might explode.

Right.

But this is exactly what the world needs, isn't it?

Because I mean, the Middle East,

there's no solution to the Middle East crisis.

The blame tennis, as so often, has become a grinding clay court baseline rally with no foreseeable end.

Think Nadal versus Nadal at Roland Garros, but with added human tragedy.

The UN has just issued a new resolution which simply says,

and perhaps most disappointingly of all, God, the retired deity and former Middle East resident, has failed to break his or her silence on the matter, which now stretches back inconveniently a considerable

amount of time, either to clarify exactly who that land was promised to or to just give it to someone else, the Buddhists or snooker fans, just to, you know, liven up the situation a bit.

But, as you say, When it comes to, you know, oh my God, we're f ⁇ ing doom perspective, this news, Alice, that you broke exclusively for the world via the bugle just seconds ago, that lurking deep within the bowels of the celebrity nuclear disaster site, Chernobyl, there is an inaccessible chamber where the Russians are breeding radioactive, depleted, plutonium, supersized, flesh-eating Tyrannosaurus's rexes.

That could take our minds of everything else.

Just fill it in.

There's no countries.

It's easy if everything explodes.

Yeah, there's a deep hot pit somewhere in Chernobyl.

I don't know if you can visualize Chernobyl as a disaster site, but

it's like a horrifying monster hidden inside an enigma in the center of a puzzle

made of active fission mazes covered in a sort of glassy nuclear lava.

And some of it has just decided that it isn't as stable as we would hope

had we not already filed Chernobyl in old news rather than extremely radioactive future news.

Everyone knows that radioactivity goes away pretty quickly, right?

Yeah, Yeah, it does.

It's a short-term problem.

Well, I mean,

a couple of things.

We haven't had full disclosure

on both these stories, on the Middle East and Chernobyl.

Both our grannies mean that we can't be entirely neutral on these stories because

one of our grandmothers, like us, was one of God's chosen people.

And the Chernobyl disaster happened on the birthday of our other granny, the 26th of April,

in 1986.

So, I mean,

we need to sort of lay those cards on the table before we say if we're for or against the Chernobyl disaster reoccurring.

Our grandmother, who was birthday Chernobyl shares,

used to make strawberry ice cream that never thawed.

So if we could get a huge brick of that, that would really calm things down in that pit of nuclear fire.

The problem seems to arise from this sub-reactor room 305 slash 2, which as a cricket fan I read as 305 for 2.

And

the second wicket has never fallen with a score at 305 in any international cricket match, men's or women.

So, read into that what you will, people.

To me, that is fishier than a food podcast hosted by two dolphins.

And you can hear the latest episode of

via your usual podcast apps, along with the Bugle, the Gargle featuring Alice Fraser and all of Helen's infinite number of podcasts.

Well,

as we contemplate our dystopian future, let's move on to animals news now, because we're obviously not the only species on the planet for now.

But we do like to utilise other species, in particular in currently American politics.

Now, Helen, you are, of course, the Bugles

use of animals in American political campaigning correspondent.

Bring us up to date with the latest from California.

Well,

the Republican John Cox, who is running to be California's next governor, having been beaten last time he ran to be California's governor by Gavin Newsom, is campaigning with a thousand-pound Kodiak bear named Tag.

It is unclear whether Tag shares political affiliations with John Cox because when John Cox is making speeches with Tag, Tag is usually just flopped on the ground looking bored as

but the whole the whole thing is that

he's running on this beauty and the beast campaign where Gavin Newsom is beauty and he's like no meet the beast

and

the beast sad slave bear the beast well the beast is supposedly John Cox who's a very normal looking late middle aged white man where he's wearing a business shirt with no tie that's the drama

And he's got a bus that says meet the beast.

However,

he went to

do his speeching in San Diego, which has a city law that bans anyone except for zoos to bring in wild animals.

No person shall offer for sale, give away, bring into, or maintain within an area coming within the jurisdiction of this ordinance any lion, tiger, bear, monkey, wolf, cougar, ocelot, wildcat, or skunk.

Well, also, I mean, I mean, you say Helen, he's a rich,

you know, white man with grey hair in a suit, and yet he stars himself as beast.

Is this not finally some honesty from the patriarchy about how the beast has been hiding in plain sight for all these thousands of years?

Hiding, would you say

hiding?

Getting in the way of everyone.

Tag also, and was tag not one of Sarah Palin's children, Tag.

Yes.

Sure.

The bear, of course, is the symbol of California.

Such campaigning using symbolic animals, of course, is not allowed here in the UK after that tragic incident in Wales, which led to an entire village burning to the ground.

Is it possible that John Cox is simply making a big play for the electorally crucial voter demographic of people who want to be able to shit in the woods without the threat of prosecution?

And that's why he's

a very tactical running mate for me.

That does make sense.

Our dad was very motivated by finding a property where he could pee outside without anyone seeing.

And he is

either like

an early boomer, or what generation is Bob Boomers?

Silence.

So, yeah, he is like John Cox's Republican voter demographic.

Maybe it is all about exterior evacuations.

Well, we're sharing a lot about our family in this episode.

I think he'd be proud.

Pig arse news now and

some very exciting news recently, broken via the new scientist website, Helen, about pigs being able to breathe oxygen through their pig asses.

Yeah, that's the kind of arse pigs have.

Pig

arse.

Yes.

Also known as sausage in its process form, I believe.

So, I mean,

what implication does this have for

humans?

Because, you know, obviously we

pigs are

very much our role models and inspirations

as a species, as George Orwell tapped into.

So

just explain exactly what the pigs do, why, and how this might benefit us.

Well, they anaesthetize the pigs and essentially put ventilators up their asses

because when you are being ventilated in hospital down your throat, it's pretty unpleasant.

It requires a lot of heavy drugs,

it can be very traumatic and can damage your lungs.

Whereas, up your ass, much less damaging.

So, they're thinking, well, if pigs can do it, maybe humans can breathe through their asses, and maybe ultimately, humans will finally literally be able to talk out of their asses.

What they haven't quite

dealt with yet is the fact that

it's not a passage that is only for putting ventilators up.

There's stuff that comes out.

Right.

So

that's as true of pigs as it is of humans, is it?

It seems to be quite common amongst mammals, yeah.

Okay.

So the problem is, I guess, when you shit into your ventilator.

Yeah.

Well, that's a famous saying, isn't it?

Don't shit into your ventilator.

Don't shit where you breathe.

Yeah.

Testify.

In other animals news, groundbreaking eye operation has been performed on a tiger

here in England.

A tiger with bad eyes has now had a special operation and its eyes are good again, if I may simplify the story.

Hopefully, this will have a kind of Androcles and the lion-type effect, where Androcles

took the thorn out of the lion's foot.

And then in the arena, when the Romans were baying for the lion to

eat the Christian gladiator, the lion said, no,

this guy's okay.

He took the thorn out of my foot.

Give me someone else to savage to death um but

if we can save tiger's eyes it's possible that they will then also let us blunten their teeth and stop them tearing us limb from limb as they

as they love to do so i mean this is this is the kind of science we need isn't it do you think it will be like uh saint jerome and the lion where he took the thorn out of the lion's foot and then the lion just followed him around everywhere This tiger will just be following its cataract surgeon around.

What is it with lions and thorns?

It's clingy.

Yeah.

Well, in some parts of the world, the stone called tiger's eye is believed to ward off the evil eye, but in this instance, the evil eye was the tiger's eye, and it needed an operation.

And we gave it that operation so it can see us better and make its plans.

One final piece of animal news.

It has emerged that Roald Amundsen, who won the 1911-12 Antarctica Grand Prix, beating Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole, could be disqualified retrospectively after new evidence suggests that he might have gnawed on the illegal, still warm flesh of raw penguins and vaunted his victory over the flat, flightless flappers by roaring, now I am become death, destroyer of penguins.

Of course, penguins are contraband under the

laws of Antarctic exploration at the time, before they'd fully discovered anabolic steroids.

And the Norwegian polar exploration star apparently learned to eat penguins on an earlier expedition where it was found by an American doctor, Frederick Cook, that chowing down on raw penguin could stop you getting scurvy um which

I don't know I don't know as as a as a parent who uh you know has spent much of the last decade and a half trying to encourage children to eat uh healthier foods if only I'd known that raw penguin was an option then we might have had fewer fights over

over broccoli um apparently they used to trap the penguins with uh with music

apparently they they got a crew member who had a cornet with him to start tootling away on the cornet and the penguins would waddle up.

Described by one of the people on the expedition as being like the Pied Piper of Hamlin.

The penguins would waddle up and then be killed and eaten, which...

You must have a brass band as to why.

That's right.

If music be the food of Polar Expedition, play on.

But anyway, must have left the penguins feeling pretty brassed off.

Oh.

pandemic news now.

And well, as I mentioned at the start, here in the UK, it's party, party, party time.

Hugs are allowed again.

There is, however, concern about the so-called Indian variant, which is challenging our beloved UK variant in the global race for top variant.

The government is going ahead with easing lockdown.

Scientists are warning of the risks, and the government is responding by saying, yeah, well, you can if you want, but maybe don't.

And sort of like, yeah, yeah, which is the kind of clarity we've all come to know and love during this most tedious of global crises.

Helen, how are you going to celebrate the reopening of

bits of life this week?

Well, I read a five-point guide to safe hugging on the BBC website since you've already pinned the bugle one.

And it basically says, don't go around hugging everyone.

Hug outside.

Turn your faces away from each other and keep hugs short.

So basically, hug someone like you're being forced to make up after an argument.

The kind of

We understand.

This is the thing, Andy, this like relaxing of the rules against hugs reveal only one thing, and it is that hugs were never allowed in the UK.

Social distancing regulations were merely a tissue-thin veil over the deep British desire to remain six feet away from everyone, up to and including their nearest and dearest loved ones, except when very drunk.

And the only reason that we've had the regulations in place is to balance the urge not to hug people against the also deeply British urge to complain complain about things.

Well, this is a very exciting new conspiracy theory on this virus.

Rather than it necessarily, as we've all assumed so far, being Bill Gates trying to implant robots into people's brains, it's actually British people trying to avoid awkward social situations where they're expected to have physical contact with other people.

Well, our emotional damage has wrought some havoc on the world in the past, so there is previous form.

Yes, I guess so.

This is one of the things you notice about quote-unquote ethnic jokes.

Like I find if I tell jokes about my Jewish culture, then I have Indian people relating to it, oh, yeah, we have domineering mothers who want to hug you a lot as well.

And then you find it that it's related to other cultures as well.

And it turns out the British are the weird ones.

You're the weird ones who don't like touching your children.

You're the ones who have this

strange inability to express your emotion.

Every other culture on earth is actually quite good at communicating.

But they don't have to go over and like take over a different country to prove their love for their mother.

They can just give her a cake.

Oh, if only we'd been told.

The government has advised caution

with the relaxing of guidelines.

The latest protocols are that restaurants can have customers inside, but in order to deter people from spending too much time inside with other people, staff should be as rude as possible.

Food should either be overcooked or undercooked.

And instead of ambient music, venues should play the sound of industrial drilling, mating foxes and or Prince Charles rapping.

That should have people safely back outside in 20 to 30 minutes max.

Cinemas, meanwhile, have been advised only to show really terrible films that people will probably walk out from within the first half hour, such as any film featuring...

I can't say that on this podcast.

And Sport, similarly, has been instructed to minimise the time fans spend in stadiums and arenas by asking home teams to tank it in the opening minutes, for referees to give unjustifiable decisions against the home team, and for the PA system to announce that the club has been taken over by one or more of a genocidal despot, a curiously unjailed plutocrat, or an anonymous vulture capitalist cartel to prompt fans to storm out of the stadium in disgust.

Billionaire news now, and well, it's a delight to be joined on this podcast by two billionaires

in terms of spiritual wealth, if not necessarily necessarily financial wealth.

But watch out, world.

I know both of you are keen yacht owners

and there's been

remember

your birthday as a child, often buying you a new yacht.

Yeah, just throw it on the par with the other yachts.

And, well, Jeff Bezos has,

I guess, I mean, this was an amazing story at last of Jeff Bezos' new lot, because it's that know, that difficulty.

What does the man who has everything buy for himself, the man who has everything?

And it turns out the answer is a half a billion dollar yacht that's so big it needs a support yacht to work properly.

Well, yachts get lonely, too.

Fantastic.

Come on, come on.

He's recently divorced.

Can you really blame him for trying to soothe his aching heart with a 417-foot super yacht?

Who among us has not post-breakup invested some of our $185 billion in a luxury ship the size of a dreadnought for us to escape the stifling reminders of our ex and the boring nation-state-based constraints of land-based legal jurisdictions on the open ocean?

From Bezos' point of view, if he had half a billion dollars to spare and he basically has about half a trillion dollars to spare, could he, I mean, is buying a yacht with a backup yacht necessarily the best use of that money?

I mean, or could he have spent some of it, for example, on improving working conditions and pay for Amazon warehouse staff or throwing some of his loose change into various government collection buckets, also known as paying a bit more tax?

No.

No, not options.

Not of interest to him, Andy.

Also, I noted that

the chief executive officer of a super yacht interior studio said that this yacht can cruise for 9,000 nautical miles without needing refueling.

And she said, clients can enjoy life at sea for long periods without having to go mix with others.

So presumably, this is just Jeff Bezos' way of having as close as possible to his own planet until that is possible,

which is four years' time.

Exactly, it's not far away.

And, well, another one of those billionaires who's done

a terrific pandemic economically, Elon Musk, the undisputed Willy Wonker of reality.

Last week, he said he was going to pay for a moon mission using a meme-inspired joke cryptocurrency based around pictures of a sceptical-looking Japanese dog causing a crash in the value of the rival pseudo-money Bitcoin by highlighting how bad Bitcoin is for the environment, whilst, let us not forget, also planning to blast rockets to the f ⁇ ing moon, and having also recently given himself the new job title of Techno King, a title coincidentally fought over vigorously by me and Helen in the 90s club scene in Tunbridge Wells.

Yes, at the grassrobing centre, we squared off with our crayons.

Alice, you are Bugle's official Elon Musk correspondent.

Are you starting to get worried for him at all?

Yeah, I mean, look, Elon Musk continues his long-running winning streak of counterbalancing all of his best business ventures with incredibly bad and annoying failed attempts to be cool and or funny on Twitter or television.

He, look,

the thing about this, the thing about this kind of story where he said that he's going to let people pay for space things with Dogecoin and then, you know, that it's he's going to send his first mission to Mars and it's going to be called Doge One.

I find a lot of my smarter friends struggle struggle with stories like this because they think they must be missing something complicated and that this kind of announcement can't possibly be as stupid and pointless as it sounds.

But the thing is, it is.

This is as dumb as it sounds.

There's no behind-the-scenes story here.

There's no plan.

There's no four-dimensional chess.

There's no chess at all.

They are at best playing checkers.

And if it's checkers, they're playing against themselves and they keep losing.

In other billionaires' news, well, Bill Gates, it turns out, loves train sets.

In particular, a very big train set that is the Canadian National Railway Network and the trains that run on it.

It's been reported that Gates owns $13 billion worth of Canada's biggest railway.

Alice, I know you're a massive fan of

railways as well as billionaires.

What's the f ⁇ ing point?

I mean, look, okay, so this is all coming out as he and Melinda Gates Gates split their assets.

But of all of the billionaires, I have more time for Bill Gates because at least he's curing malaria while also I presumably doing something sinister in the background.

Filling trains with mosquitoes.

Well, look, they figured out a vaccine to solve malaria, but I'm not going to be pleased with it until they have it injected by mosquitoes.

And then

I'll be happy.

Meaning, giving something back.

Isn't it striking that when you are the richest people on earth, still all you can think of really to do with it is buy things that go broom broom?

It's like what a seven-year-old would do if they were suddenly a billionaire.

Trains, big boat, go to the moon.

Well, we never truly grow up as a species.

I think history is a testament to that.

In other billionaires news, some of the world's leading social media billionaires have come together to launch a new scheme to try to help deal with online hate speech and anonymous provocation online.

The group has launched Do Speak Ill of the Dead, a new scheme which aims to stop people spewing bile towards other people who are alive now and instead only abuse the long dead.

A spokesbillionaire for the group said, We cannot stop people using our platforms as an outlet for their assaultative verbal brutalities or to take responsibility for the consequences of their bilious twattery because, well, traffic is traffic and we have businesses to run.

But we can direct them towards channeling their hatred towards those who can't be affected by it.

So we will be helping our angry users dispense harrowingly graphic threats towards, for example, women who wore slightly more than averagely revealing togas in third century Rome, or visceral prejudice against long extinct tribes who did things differently to us in the prehistoric Americas, or groundless complaints about how the immigrant communities who moved around the world around 50,000 years BC are taking our jobs and banning us from saying what we want to say.

We feel this is the most beneficial way for us to abdicate our responsibilities whilst also protecting our users' god-given right to spew abuse at others.

So at least there's some positive movement in that direction.

Britain News Now and last week we had the state opening of Parliament where the Queen, dabbling in her intermittent role as the nation's official voice-over artist, karaoke the shit out of the government's latest legislative programme and whatever else we lose as a nation, Helen, we always do ridiculous official ceremonies better than anyone.

It's the last thing to go.

It's like a boxer's punch.

And

but this, I did, I don't know if you uh watched it last week, but the queen didn't wear a crown this year.

Um, I mean, I know you love the uh the pump and ceremony that goes with all British institutions and are a huge fan of the monarchy as a symbol that uh some people are just special.

But she didn't wear um she didn't wear a crown.

Um, what is suitable headgear for when you're announcing things about uh voter suppression?

Well,

it was something quite natty.

A crown.

It was, well, a crown, yes.

Crown would be suitable.

It was kind of mauve with some stuff on it.

I don't know what mauve as a colour symbolises.

And I think that's all the colours of all the political parties mixed up with some yogurt, I think.

But it was this morning that she didn't take the opportunity to wear a Jimmy hat as

a gesture of reconciliation towards Scotland with some fake ginger curls out the back.

But, well, you mentioned

voter suppression, which is

highly popular amongst politicians who, well, if nothing else, it shows they like their job because they want to keep it by whatever means possible.

There were plans announced for people to have to show photo ID.

at British elections.

This followed a surge in fraudulent voting in 2019, which across the general election, local and European elections led to a grand total of four criminal convictions and two police cautions.

And yet they've managed to

move against this, Ellen, as a form of sort of electoral fraud.

Well, Andy, it's much easier to solve problems that don't really exist.

This is why we need your simple wisdoms on the show.

And well, for possibly the first time in your life, you and the former Conservative cabinet minister David Davis agree.

Oh, no.

He describes the plans as an illiberal solution in pursuit of a non-existent problem.

It is nice to hear a politician speaking truth for once.

Well, I mean, the Queen also got in trouble for spouting the government's plans on social care, or rather the absence of social care.

And there's nothing more beautiful than watching a woman in her 90s sell literally all of her age mates down the river.

Yes.

She's just sick of signing telegrams to people.

Fair enough.

She doesn't want anyone to survive.

Boris Johnson had promised that he would deal with the social care crisis when he became prime minister in 2019.

And

it turns out not all of Boris Johnson's promises can be completely relied upon.

He managed to devote a full nine words to social care in the Queen's speech in which he said proposals on social care reform will be brought forward.

If brevity is the soul of wit, it is also the soul of a government policy that hasn't been properly thought through, costed, or indeed written at all.

And I think it showed how incredibly good the queen is at her job that she managed to say those nine words without so much as twitching an eyebrow or saying, hey, Boz, there's a f ⁇ ing page missing here.

You've missed out a massive bit, Boz.

Passive verbs always inspire confidence, don't they?

That's the sound of stuff that's in hand.

The Daily Mail even was not impressed, and they took some time out from their latest scoops, including Famous Woman Walk Somewhere whilst wearing something, to accuse Johnson of breaking his promises to the electorate.

And Johnson replied, but they like that.

Look at the election results.

I want that.

So, you know,

this is not a problem.

It's not so much a sledgehammer to crack a nut as a sledgehammer to whack a grain of salt on the pub table next to where you've just eaten a bowl of pistachios, which obviously didn't need cracking in the first place, whilst alien bat creatures, which are impervious to all weapons other than sledgehammers, are drinking all the beer straight out of the barrels and shitting on the pool table.

And finally, this week, here's a quick joke for you.

How many cyber criminal gangs does it take to take a major pipeline offline and cause massive disruption across the entire USA?

Two.

One to take the five and a half thousand mile long pipeline offline, spark panic buying of petrol, cause several states to declare an emergency, shoot fuel prices to a record high, get a $5 million ransom paid, and then attack a European division of tech giant Toshiba.

And the other to think, oh, I wish we'd done that.

It seems alarmingly easy.

Instead, we'll just carry on hacking into the withering soul of democracy.

Badunch.

Alice,

it's quite an extraordinary story, this, isn't it?

That a pipeline, as I said, covering 5,500 miles of America, one of the most important pipelines in the USA, was taken offline by hackers.

Yes, indeed, criminals and 14-year-old hackers around the world are said to be turning their attention from cryptocurrency as the big get-rich-quick scheme slash scam scene, and are hoping to turn their hands to hacking like it's the 90s again.

This is the untold story of Mad Max and Colonial Pipeline, which is this very long pipeline, suffered this rant what they call a ransomware cyber attack, which is where they attack your cyber and ask for a ransom.

It's sort of particularly being taken personally by the US because they immediately paid the ransom while President Joe Biden was signing a new cyber crime executive order before Colonial just admitted that they'd

didn't trust the President and they didn't trust American cyber defense capabilities and that they were willing to pay literally any ransom.

So,

you know, people may be encouraged to continue to do this kind of thing in the future, which is pretty depressing.

The hackers afterwards made an announcement on their website, which was quite sweet.

They said they didn't mean to cause any problems.

They just wanted money, which

is the most American approach to morality that I could possibly imagine.

Well, it's touching, isn't it?

I mean, mean, you would have thought they might have thought through the implications of taking a pipeline offline, that it would, you know, cause,

there would be implications

of it.

And the group is called Dark Sides, modern-day Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich and giving to themselves.

And

it's, and they're saying our goal is to make money and not create problems for society.

Those two are not mutually exclusive activities.

I mean, they're not.

Well, look at capitalism, Andy.

Want to make money and not cause problems for society.

It doesn't need to be an either or choice.

Just trying to make a dishonest living.

Let's let them be.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's Bugle.

Thank you very much for joining us.

I will shortly play you out with some lies about some of our premium level voluntary subscribers.

To join them or to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme in any form, to give a one-off or occurring donation, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Helen, plug all your shows.

If you can keep it to under an hour, that would be great.

Blood deal, Andy.

I only have three.

One is Answer Me This,

one is Veronica Mars Investigations, where we're recovering the TV show Veronica Mars and have almost completed.

And one is The Illusionist, which I just did an episode about the origins of SOS.

Just in case you need that for any reason in this world.

Alice, tell us about this week's gargle.

This week's gargle is a monster gargle.

It's got James Colley and Alison Spittle, and Alison Spittle reviewing the process of licking batteries, which might have been the funniest thing I have ever heard, or certainly heard in a very long time.

I highly recommend this week's episode of The Gargle.

Also, The Last Post, which comes out monthly, used to be daily.

Then I decided I would do it in a more reasonable manner.

And my sort of ongoing non-funny podcast, tea with Alice.

But you can find it all at patreon.com slash AliceFraser.

John Fairhurst thinks headquarters should be banned.

Much of the Machiavellian plotting that goes on in the corporate world seems to happen in firms' HQs, explains John.

So if you ban them from having a fancy main office wherein to concoct their schemes, I think you'll find a more honest, trustworthy business landscape will evolve in no time.

In fact, concludes John, I would ban businesses from having more than one room in any single building.

They're mostly just showing off in any case.

Thomas Lee wonders if elephants ever regret the evolutionary course they've taken as a species.

Sure, they get a lot of props for being massive and they feature in more children's books than the average creature, but I can't help thinking the whole trunks, tusks and teeth thing has brought them much unwanted attention, whilst being so enormous means it's harder to make them participate in sport like horses, dogs, humans and bulls do.

Stefan Schelm, on reading that dolphins sleep with one eye open, said about designing an eyelid-opening device that will enable humans to do the same.

We simply can't get complacent in the evolutionary race, says Stefan.

These fin-waggling weirdos might spend most of their time dicking around in the sea to no discernible purpose, sorry, but if they've got something we don't, we need to respond.

I'm also working on a device that enables babies to walk unaided within 30 minutes of birth as well.

That's an obvious weakness in Team Human as far as I'm concerned.

Charlie Brett has found that asking for clarification is a highly effective conversational strategy.

It makes whomever you're talking to think they're so smart that their incredible ideas are beyond the comprehension of normal humans, says Charlie, whilst also making it seem that you are genuinely interested and want to learn more, whereas in fact, the chances are you simply weren't listening and are buying time before anyone realizes you zoned out five to ten minutes ago to think about sport.

Alexandra Wilshire is not convinced that umbrellas have much of a future in the age of modern modernity in which most modern people now live.

Alexandra explains, we simply don't have time to mess around with brollies anymore.

I reckon within 10 years, people will have hats that can quadruple up as a hat, umbrella, social distancing moat, and barbecue, as demanded by the weather and social situation, all controlled by an app on yours or someone else's phone.

And finally, Chian Pancuchi, or indeed Chian Chian Panchuchi, or perhaps Qian Pancuchi or Chuchi, on hearing that the Queen owns all the swans in England, wonders what will happen in the extremely unlikely event that Her Majesty ever passes away.

I don't see Charles as much of a swan guy to be honest, says Chian.

He seems to prefer trees to large and intermittently aggressive aquatic birds, so I think he might sell them all off.

If he personally signed their feathers with a royal pen, I reckon we're looking at a couple of grand a swan, and if my estimate of one swan per eight people in the country is correct, we're talking 7 billion quid or thereabouts.

I mean, he would have to spend a lot of time autographing swans, but it would be worth it.

Here endeth this week's lies.

A 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.