Minimum Maximum

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 4186 of the Bugle, where bad facts and good lies come to meet, mingle, and perhaps more.

For the first time and the last time ever, it's Friday, the 12th of March, 2021, a day that by the time you listen to this, Buglers, will have joined days such as the 27th of August, 1842, the 6th of January, 1984, and the 12th of October, 786, as days in history, along with Hoo!

Hoo-hoo-hoo!

Or as we now know it, 15th of July, 19012 BC.

I'm Andy Zoltzman, and if you could see me now, I would ask you to get out of my shed, please.

I'm at work.

And joining me for this week's Bugle.

Firstly, from San Francisco, USA.

It's NATO green hello andy hello buglers it's good to see everyone how's things in uh in san francisco nato well andy you know uh it was my birthday last week and

thank you very much and as you know when you are a dad in your 40s uh and it's your birthday uh you are gifted a fair amount of alcohol um

so

by your children uh just whoever so like distilling up i'm like i didn't you know if you had asked me 10 years ago, I wouldn't have said this is who I was about to become, but I've made peace with it.

Do I need to keep absinthe and cardamaro around the house?

Apparently I do.

How many different kinds of vermouth do I need?

Apparently.

Oh, lots.

The correct answer is three.

So

that's what's going on in my life right now.

Don't look at vermouth horse in the mouth.

No, is that right?

No.

Don't look at gift vermouth in that.

I got it wrong.

We laughed because the rhythm of it was there, like it sounded like it should work.

Did we want to say, don't look at gift horse in the vermouth?

Is that where we were going?

Okay, that's what we want to say.

Good.

So

I am accepting alcohol sponsorships from

people who are making artisanal small batch syrups to mix into cocktails,

from

cask strength, whiskey distillers, you know, the whole thing.

I developed a bit of a taste for vermouth on a trip to Spain early last year,

my lockdown legacy.

Also joining us from London.

It's,

well, you've already heard her.

Butcher.

Already heard a mouthful of

jumpboard of the show.

Hello to Tiffany Stevenson.

Hello.

Hello, buglers.

Look, it happens.

It's in the moment.

I got very excited because I'm recording this in the corner of my living living room.

And then the other corner is my 1950s sideboard full of things like Vermouth and Frangelico.

Because everyone needs a drink that's kind of dressed like a sweater.

So I've got...

The best kind of mine.

The best kind of mine.

The little rope belt on mine is slung very low.

So yes, I've got that in the cupboard.

I've got Angostura Bitters with a label that doesn't fit because it never will um but i believe there's a long history to that but yeah so i was excited as soon as you mentioned cocktails i sort of like lost my mind a little bit so i'm back in the room so buglers uh to the to the uh listening audience that that are near tiff's house someone deliver her a bottle of damiana and i will venmo you because damiana is a a

mexican liqueur that has some herbal spices with tequilas but the bottle is a naked woman with big ass titties uh And I think Tiff needs that on the sideboard.

Okay.

I've got skull vodka.

Why not?

Why not?

Let's have the big titted.

Start big titted lady.

It's really changed over the years.

Now it appears to become an erotic alcoholic drinks podcast.

That's a great thing with podcasting.

There's a niche for everything.

So, and I suppose you have something else you want to talk about today, Andy.

We are recording on Friday, the 12th of March.

On Monday, the 15th of March, it'll be the anniversary of Julius Caesar in 44 BC copping a bit of an assassination during a Senate meeting.

Amongst the many conspirators who contributed to Julius Caesar's brief career as the circus act, the human pincushion, were Brutus and Cassius, a wealthy industrialist, of course, who made their money in respectively aftershave and watches.

Well, thanks to my legacy as a student of ancient Rome

back in the day, I've managed to get access to the Roman newspapers from the following day, the tabloid newspaper headlines, the day after Caesar's assassination.

Here we've got Julius Caesar,

Brew must be kidding me, cassassinated.

Then you've got the more generic ones, Senators Find Stab Solution.

Ducey that, that's picking up on Julius Caesar's abbreviated name Juicy, very much the J-Lo of his day.

Juicy That, twit tyrant staggered by daggers, and also promises all the juicy details, really doubling down on that juicy name.

G's, Senator Sleazy Wheeze brings C's to his knees.

And this one from Tempora Pecuniaria, shares rebound after Caesar's assassination as markets expect ensuing civil wars will eventually lead to a long period of imperial stability and growth.

That one one printed on pink scrolls, of course.

As always,

a section of the bugle is going straight.

That makes my degree worthwhile, people.

I mean, that one piece of comedy makes

all those wasted years and government money from the days before you had to pay for yourself.

Anyway, focus.

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

Music section, in particular, focusing on deep fake duets.

Deep fake technology, obviously, is something that humanity has to handle with care.

But one of the exciting things is it's enabling modern music stars to perform duets with long-dead stars from the past.

And we look at some of the recent duets that have been deep faked from long-dead musicians and contemporary collaborators.

First one, Henry VIII.

English king who aside from his full-time job of being a monarch as well as a freelance schism designer and monastery dissolver dabbled in music as a composer and musician and computer technology has teamed him up with the K-pop sensations G-Idol,

who, as the six-piece girl band, are perhaps understandably reported to be, quotes, nervous about the project.

Italian violin virtuoso Nick Paganini, born 1782, he's going to be bowing out some fat shops on the violin with the bro country stars Florida, Georgia line.

Interesting to see the fruits of that collaboration.

Can the technically unfathomable genius level musicianship of Paganini fit in with three chord peons to women's legs.

We shall see.

The Florida, Georgia line, of course, creators of the 2013 song Get Your Shine On, a waspish satire on cricket's hypocritical struggles with the techniques and morality of reverse swing bowling in the 1990s, of course.

While their follow-up, Dirt, was a barely concealed exoneration of former England captain Mike Atherton over the so-called dirt-in-the-pocket scandal from the Lord's Test of 1994.

And their 2019 flop Blessings is a touching tribute to the Zimbabwean international cricketers, blessing Mawira and Blessing Muzaurabani, that sadly failed to hit home with the country music by Republic of America.

And also,

our final deep fake historical pop collaboration.

The 19th century Swedish opera star Jenny Lind, also known as the Swedish Nightingale, teams up with the American duo Nils Barkley, made up of CeeLo Green and Danger Mouse, I'm reliably informed, for a computer-generated collaboration in which two versions of Green and Mouse perform the backing tracks and vocals for a single Jenny Lind in a record entitled The Nightingale Sings with Barclay Squared.

And there's a little music and mathematics joke with which to bring this section to its much-deserved end.

Top story this week, massive public spending news.

And well, NATO, let's start in America because it's been a well a great week for huge use of public funds.

Joe Biden's near $2 trillion, holy moly, we've got a grandmother load of shit to clear up coronavirus relief bill has been passed by Congress, which gave it a resounding yes, of course, and definitely no, what a ridiculous idea.

As basically all the Democrats voted for it and all the Republicans voted against it.

$1.9 trillion.

I mean, that seems like a lot, NATO, but I mean, is that a lot in the context of

the current American debt tab?

Well,

it's a lot in terms of the current American debt tab, but in terms of

the level of ferry that we have to deal with, the amount of resources it will take to unf ourselves after how thoroughly and exhaustively and methodically we have f ⁇ ed ourselves over the last low these many years.

It is not excessive.

It is an appropriate amount.

It's a stimulus bill.

Last night, actually, Joe Biden gave a primetime address.

He announced yesterday that they intended to have vaccines available for all adults in the United States by May 1st and a return to relative normalcy by the 4th of July,

which, as you know, is

the 10-day eve of Bastille Day.

So, which we celebrate assiduously in this country.

So,

I am having a strange feeling.

Like, I'm having trouble processing it.

I'm feeling, I haven't said this word in a long time.

So, I may not be able to remember how to pronounce it.

Is it, I'm feeling a hoop, hoop, hoop, house, hope,

hoop, hope.

I'm feeling hope.

Hop, I believe it's pronounced hop air.

Hopé.

For the first time, this, the, just, just like the stimulus bill, 1.9 trillion, But if you go through the different components of it, like one piece of it is an expansion of the child tax credit that is expected to cut child poverty in half.

That's it's incredible.

So,

and and then of course, you know, because I am on the left, some of my friends on the left are mad that it didn't go far enough, right?

Like there are people who that it's it is the most ambitious government stimulus ever.

Uh,

it is better, you know, people like Miss Obama, and it's better than what Obama pulled off.

And people are like, boo, it's Joe, you know, it's Joe Biden, and we don't like him, and we would rather protest losing than win.

That's sort of like the, you know,

why hasn't he abolished prisons already?

As well as this other thing.

It's like, I mean, completely, not everyone in America is happy about it because it places the American values of equality, support for the less fortunate, and collective strength above the equally American values of inequality, heartless capitalist excess, and rapacious individualism.

So it's quite a clash, really, isn't it?

Yeah,

we're really in the midst of a clash at civilization.

One of the things that the bill didn't have that we wanted was a rise in the minimum wage.

There had been a campaign for many years to raise the minimum wage

to $15 an hour, and it didn't pass because eight Democrats voted against it, all eight of whom had previously publicly supported it.

And raising the minimum wage is supported by 60% of Americans and about 85% of Democrats.

So those eight Democrats didn't want to vote for it at this time because it's too popular.

They felt like, look, man, I was into the minimum wage before it was cool, and now everyone is into the minimum wage.

And I think it's gotten corny.

Look, Democrats, it's the minimum wage.

It's not Imagine Dragons.

The minimum wage is going to go and do a residency in the Vegas, and I want nothing to do with it now.

So when you're looking at, I mean, American politics and economics for an outsider is, well, eternally baffling.

So why

the Republicans, aside from just naked politics, why are they so opposed?

Because I was reading that the relief bill should reduce annual projected poverty for 2021 from 13.7% to 8.7%.

It's the idea that once it drops below 10%,

where's the incentive for the rich to keep going to work if they know that they're not really

inflicting that much pain on the poor?

Is it an issue of motivation?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, from the perspective of the rich, their biggest fear is not actually that the poverty rate will fall and it will lead to inflation.

Their biggest fear is that the poverty rate will fall and it will make their Uber driver mouthy.

What about the apex creditors?

So the bill also provides relief funding to schools.

And in typical

Republican twister logic, Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama wanted to deny school funding to states that allow transgender students to play sports according to their birth sex.

Oh man.

So

motion to forevermore refer to anal sex as Tuberville from now on.

So

we've looked we've been dating for a while.

I think we're ready to pay a visit to Tuberville.

I got us an Airbnb in Tuberville.

Are you into that?

So

I mean if we if we're gonna do euphemisms I just I don't like that the Americans call it a stimulus package.

It sounds like a euphemism for vibrator.

And all I've seen is Americans going, I'm waiting for my stimulus package for months.

I'm going to have to make do with my electrical toothbrush.

Nancy Pelosi described the stimulus bill as, quote, the most consequential legislation that many of us will ever be a party to.

Well, I'm not sure she's right about that.

Wait till the Rejoin Britain bill comes around and I'll give it three years.

And it was criticised by Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, who said it's not a rescue bill, it's a laundry list of left-wing priorities, which was a curious way of putting it, a laundry list, because I guess if you've got a laundry list, it does suggest that over the past four years, your clothes have been covered in shit.

So maybe

that is perhaps the better way of describing it.

$1,400 per person stimulus payments

are included in this bill.

Now, in American terms, that amounts to, what is it, about 60 or 70 brunches, or 2,000 rounds of ammunition,

or five online exorcisms.

I did genuinely check that.

You can get them for just under $300 a pop.

361 bottles of easy cheese sprayable cheese,

two inflatable Mitch McConnells, the non-erotic version,

or 120 odd tickets to the Bugle Live Show on Saturday, the 27th of March, priced at £7

available on the website.

16 cameo videos from Nigel Farage,

who we will touch on a little bit later, but he's

joined

cameo, which is not something I've been aware of, but it's so kind of celebrities basically hawk individualized videos for a certain £63.75 to get Nigel Farage to

send you a message about $100 or so, which

seems quite a lot.

I think I might book him to record a message, not for me, but for my as-yet hypothetical unborn grandchildren, just saying sorry.

Or for your $1,400, you could get about 20 minutes of the time of baseballer Mike Trout, whose $426 million 12-year contract works out at around $4,000 an hour, assuming a 24-7, 365 working schedule.

And I think we can assume that because Trout is always on call wherever and whenever a baseball needs to be hit.

Moving across the Atlantic to massive amounts of public money being spent in, well, I think a less productive manner.

The track and trace scheme here has been under the microscope here.

The House of Commons Public Account Committee, which keeps an eye on exactly how much money governments chunder into the capacious void of political panicry,

said that the

government's track and trace scheme to deal with COVID has gobbled up, quotes, unimaginable amounts of public money, 37 billion in total for last year and this year.

That's three Olympics at least that we've fritted away there.

And it's been claimed that the scheme has basically been marked by the four I's, inefficiency, incompetence, idiocy.

And I know him.

Let's give him a multi-million pound contract of exactly what I record him doing.

Tiff, you are our government waste correspondent.

It's been quite an impressive achievement, really, to spend so much money to so little effect.

I just, I hadn't been that interested in track and trace.

Like, I'd be interested in it if Track and Trace were a movie about a female athlete named Tracy.

That would really,

it's not grabbing me otherwise.

But

basically, the Independent have produced this list of

the biggest wastes of public money and Track and Trace is in the mix.

It's kind of like a um a league table i want to make it a bit alan more so i'm going to call it league of extraordinary waste men

um

uh brackets and woman uh

um because what we have is a list of wonderful cross-party cock-ups uh so we've got track and trace in at 37 billion the nhs it system

24 billion uh the public service pension reform 17 billion these have been adjusted to today's figures uh one of my favorites the millennium dome uh at 1.3 billion pounds uh so basically the total cost if you don't know about our millennium dome uh nato let me share with you so this was it was estimated at around 780 million so 1.3 uh billion today with most of the money coming from the national lottery and um various private sector bidders for the attraction sort of dropped out and the government ultimately disposed of the dome uh for nothing to a consortium of property developers and they were like we'll get some money from the O2 venue which is now a music venue and at the time they said in value for money terms this is the best deal we could have got said the minister in charge Lord Falconer

Why is someone called Lord Falconer, clearly a character from Conan the Barbarian, why is he allowed to decide how this public spending happens?

Like you could, you're a lord, you couldn't be more out of touch with what people want.

and this is why our system is inherently ridiculous you know we we've wasted money like i imagine him having one foot up on the castle window and an eagle on his arm

you know like um well that's if that's what we can get for it take it peanuts for the peasants um one 1.3 billion i mean it's not the most expensive also on the list is concord at 10 billion which feels

I don't know.

I don't know how you guys feel.

Concorde feels a little bit more, at least like it was exciting technology.

Yeah, it it was loud at the time.

I mean that the Millennium Dome was I mean that seemed to sort of capture the moment really.

That was the early years of the Tony Blair government and they spent a ludicrous amount of money on something that was unbelievably pointlessly shit.

It was essentially they yeah they built the Millennium Dome and filled it with what was universally viewed as one of the most pointless exhibitions.

in history.

And I can't even remember what I didn't I didn't go to.

My wife went to it and but it was like there was a giant human body in it and a load of just assorted focus group generated crap and it I think that's where the faith in the Blair the sort of Blair revolution started to dwindle you think what I mean you can't come up with something less shit than that and then a millennium night there was the the river of fire was supposed to go down the Thames and it didn't light so we just end up with a river of water which was less impressive

but

the thing with test and track and trace is it's managed to hit that sweet spot of both substandard performance and surplus capacity, which is actually quite a high tariff manoeuvre.

I mean it's to do one or the other, that's you know, a piece of piece of cake politically, but to do both at once

is uh that that takes something.

And um I don't know if it's gonna uh even

damage Boris Johnson politically, because so much of his political strategy has been based on making himself come across as someone who couldn't give a flying f about uh other ordinary people and uh the workers of the UK and the less fortunate.

So obviously, you know, wasting all this money is probably going to play well with the voting public.

Royal news now, and well, since we're on the subject of

wasting public money,

it's time to look at the latest situation in the royal family here in the United Kingdom.

And for anyone worried about Britain in this post-Brexit, post-divorce phase, worry no more because the vital signs of life are still there.

The definitive proof that Britain lives on alive and well because we are still tearing ourselves apart over the royal family as it tears itself apart.

Now,

there's very few things that genuinely bind this country together, Tiff, but medieval feudalism remains one of them.

And

over the past week, the country has been divided once again into fundamentally people who couldn't give a flying f ⁇ about the internal squabblings of our symbolic non-executive figurehead family and those who do give a flying f ⁇ about it.

And I mean, it's quite hard.

I'm not sure there's a bridge between those two, two halves of the country, is there?

I think there, I think there is.

I think there's a there's a um

like abolish the monarchy, which is me, uh, but also at the same time, I quite like Megan and Harry.

Um, and I view them like we don't need the royals anymore, we've got celebrities now.

Let's just go like the America, the Americans, and just have celebrity families.

Uh, we don't, I mean,

it's been an interesting week because uh, uh, back in 2018, uh, myself and

a little-known comic called John Oliver

both did bits on TV about

why,

both did bits about, well, answering the question of, are you excited by the royal wedding?

Which I was asked multiple times and by Americans, like kind of, because I think Americans assume that British people are generally on board with the monarchy.

And when I was asked, you know, like, was I excited about the wedding?

I said, no.

How would you have to feel if you had to pay every time a Kardashian got married?

Like, that's sort of how I feel about royal weddings.

I'm following this as an outsider to your shenanigans.

So, and I'm trying to follow who people are.

But Piers Morgan looks like if Stephen Fry was a sausage casing having an allergic reaction to itself.

I didn't watch the Oprah Winfrey interview with Megan and Harry because, well, A, I'm 46

and I'm not really an adult in any respects in my life, but I have grown out of giving a flying one about stories of princes and princesses and castles and magic hats and families being appointed by God to do a specific job for an infinite number of generations.

That is my one concession to adulthood.

And like I said, I'm just not, my view of the royal family is very much like someone's view of snooker who doesn't like snooker.

I mean, the similarities are obvious.

I don't really care what happens.

I don't understand why it's on TV so much.

I'm slightly confused by the strange old-fashioned clothing.

Most other countries don't really like the idea of it.

It would be nice if it's a little more diverse and it's probably a matter of time before China takes the whole thing over.

So, you know, I can see, you know, that people do like it.

Not my bag.

Nothing against, you know.

most of the royal family as individuals as outdated historical relics go that they're fine uh in the grand scheme of things if you overlook the perpetuation of the socially corrosive view that you can be born special and i'm prepared to do that just this once but i think the problem with this is that, and why this has caused such ructions, is because the Royal Family is a beacon of Britishness.

And in this interview, it was really an assault on some of the absolute pillars of British traditions, such as not talking openly about mental health, not calling out racism, and of rich and powerful men's wives being nice and quiet and not saying anything.

Those are three bulwarks of our history and society, and they rode roughshod over them.

So you can understand why some people have got very cross about it.

I love that feature of British news coverage that

where the buildings talk.

Buckingham Palace is speaking to Ten Downing.

Ten Downing had a stern rebuke to Buckingham Palace.

The palace would like a word.

Buckingham Palace and Ten Downing are spooning.

Palace Lives Matter.

So the Credenza in the picture gallery would like to issue a statement.

This is bullshit.

Now it's time for our special convoluted good news section.

NATO is one of life's great optimists, as discussed earlier on.

You are our convoluted good news correspondent, and you've managed to find some glimmers of light in the universe for us this week.

That's right, Andy.

So, you know, one of the challenges of following the news is you have to cut through the noise.

A lot of good news involves like a convoluted quadruple negative.

Like we defeated repealing not funding contingent on funding not.

And then you have to be like, you have like to have a flowchart to be like, oh, that's actually great.

So they hit it.

So this week, the House of Representatives passed the PRO Act to make it easier for workers to form unions.

It's very exciting.

In the floor debate, Democratic Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan said, heaven forbid we pass something that's going to help the damn workers of the United States of America in what he thought was a retort to the Republicans.

And the Republicans replied, exactly.

That's exactly what we think.

Heaven forbid we help the damn workers.

We We would just, we would be happy to damn the workers.

That's why is he shouting?

We've been saying this all along.

Another bit of good news: in an attempt to defeat challengers from the left, like Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee blacklisted campaign consultants who worked on primaries in order to deprive those campaigns of campaign staff.

And in a win for the left, the DCCC stopped doing that.

They reversed the rule

because I don't know, you don't know how difficult it is to find someone who can mock up a glossy campaign mailer with a photo of the candidate in an improbably multiracial group of people holding a baby while looking pensively into the distance and also listening intently to constituents next to text about a heartwarming folksy homily about their personal narrative uh so that was great uh so i'm i was intrigued by this this this this this blacklist so they basically it you know for vendors who worked for progressive primary candidates were put on a blacklist that then stopped them working for any other Democrats.

Is that essentially...

Correct.

Right.

So, I mean, because it's always surprising as an outsider to find all these cheeky little anti-democratic Easter eggs hidden in the American democratic system.

There seems to be an almost infinite number of them.

We're not totalitarian.

We won't throw you in jail or literally censor you.

We'll just deprive you of your livelihood until you surrender.

And that is freedom.

So.

Is it the left trying to prevent the left from becoming too left?

That's right.

That the center left is concerned that the left will do something that is popular and successful and will

get in the way of our undefeated run of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

And we can't let that happen.

I was reading about this

public charge

policy of the Trump administration.

And

his acting director of citizenship and immigration services, Ken Cuccinelli,

in supporting Trump's policy, he did his own little revision of the poem that is on a plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 called The New Colossus.

It was a sonnet, and he rewrote the last few lines.

And I'll just read the last few lines for you, the original, which go like this: Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp, cries she with silent lips.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these the homeless tempests toss to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

And these were translated by Trump's acting director of U.S.

Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ken Cuccinelli, to

Scottish mermaid news now.

And well, there's been great concern over the health and well-being of mermaids as a species.

They're feared endangered.

Most aquariums no longer have mermaids.

They have, well, fish and they often have human staff, but seldom both merged at once.

And well, in Scotland in particular...

Well, the mermaid is in many ways the national emblem of Scotland

due to, well, it really encapsulates a lot of what Scotland is about when you look at the difference in life expectancy between the top half and the bottom half but that really encapsulates Scottish economics but Tiff tell us what's been what's been going on in the world of Scottish mermaidry

well obviously there's only one person that I can ask

to explain this story accurately

so to unpack this story Scottish boyfriend explains a hang

so there's this new programme on the BBC about a real-life mermaid right And I got a call the other day from wee Kenny going on and on about it saying, I tell you, they was real.

And basically trying to convince me that the story he had told me and Johnny about him kissing a real-life mermaid was actually true.

Now, bear in mind, this was about seven years ago he tell us that story.

And Kenny can usually can you remember what happened on f ⁇ ing Corrie two day ago.

So this mermaid incident must have had a real impact on him, no?

So I thought to myself, maybe he's no talking shite after all right then i remember took me a minute like because as i says it was eight years ago but i remembered that day when we kenny thought he'd winched a mermaid we'd been up at the field right behind the academy picking magic mushies me we kenny johnny and johnny's big bread davy uh only

there were hunters and we were just gubbing them down i remember we kenny talking pish about a mermaid but we didn't pay any attention because johnny was spewing his ring and ended up having to get his stomach pumped.

So I don't care what this BBC hang is about, but I'll tell you one thing.

If mermaids are real, I guarantee fing tea, there's no way any of them would kiss Wee Kenny's stupid face.

Well, there you go.

I think we've all been educated and illuminated by that.

Before we go, one final piece of very important news.

A Chinese zoo has tried to pass off a dog as a wolf.

There was some social media footage, is there any other kind these days, from a visitor to the Zhangwushan Zoo in Xianning, Hubei province, who went to see the wolf enclosure.

And in the wolf enclosure, there was something that was, I think we can say, obviously, not a wolf.

It was a dog.

It looked like a Rottweiler dog, which doesn't really look like a wolf.

But let's give this zoo some credit.

I mean, yeah, I mean, yes, you know, if you, if you say there's going to be a wolf and then it's not a wolf, you know, your customers are going to be understandably confused.

But dogs are descended from wolves.

So is this not really, you know, an educational, almost an educational satire on evolution?

You know, what is wolf?

What is dog?

And also, it's not that dissimilar to when you go to a petting zoo that promises you a chance to get up and close up close and personal with a Tyrannosaurus Rex and all it is is a chicken.

And, you know, we've all been there.

And that, to me,

is fair enough.

And of course, in China, there is a bit of a trend these days for things locked in enclosures to be wrongly labeled, whether it's a dog labeled as a a wolf or victims of ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses labeled as re-education students.

Maybe just a labelling issue, isn't it?

Wasn't there a scientific experiment in the Soviet Union where they tried to accelerate the evolution of wolves by

they would kill wolves that acted out to see how quickly they could turn them into dogs?

That sounds like the best reality TV show and the worst reality TV show at the same time.

A dog in wolf's clothing.

with David Attenborough

and his magic bulk gun

evolve now.

No,

how about this gun?

Does that make you want to hurry up?

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

Thank you very much for listening.

Don't forget to listen to the Bugle's sister publication, The Gargle, the magazine supplement to The Bugle coming out every week with the wonderful Alice Fraser.

Tiff, I think you were on that last week or this week.

Yes.

I was.

Yes.

Myself and Hari.

It was very fun.

Do listen to that.

Tiff, any shows to tell people about?

Oh, well, I have a show the day after, I think, the live bugle, which I believe is the 27th of March.

It should all go buy tickets for that.

And then on the 28th of March, you should watch me do my work in progress with an X-Up comedy at 7pm.

So most places in the world, you can watch this.

If you want to watch it in the afternoon in America, although I did specifically do a show for the Americans that was four o'clock in the morning in the UK.

But yes, 28th of March.

I think if you've got a next-up membership, you can watch it for free.

Otherwise, tickets are £9.

NATO,

any shows or album releases?

You know,

my two comedy albums are available online.

The best way to buy them is Bandcamp.

That's where I get the most.

dough.

Follow me at NATO Green on Twitter, Mr.

Nato Green on Instagram.

On Sunday, I am doing my first live performance in an outdoor show.

The first time I've been on stage live in a year with an actual audience, outdoors, mass on, safe situation.

And the show will be, I think, streamed via the website of Brokeass Stewart is the name.

So it'll be, but I haven't talked to people outside my house in a year, so it could be a total, total cluster f ⁇ .

So who knows?

And

if if you're interested in something completely different, I have a new article out in the arts journal

hyperallergic.com about Cuban art.

So I am a Renaissance man.

I have an article about cricket statistics out in the Wisdom Cricket Monthly magazine.

So, you know, we're all writing stuff.

I'm not a Renaissance man.

Anyway, thank you.

At least you're qualified to write about cricket statistics, which cannot be said about my musings about Cuban art.

Don't forget the Bugle live show on the 27th of March.

Tickets available via the Bugle website or just the internet in general.

We'll be back next week with Nish Kumar and Hari Kondabolu.

Until then, Buglers, 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.