4160 - Worms Around The Moon

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4160 of The Bugle, audio newspaper for a world that doesn't really know if it's visual anymore.

It's frankly got no idea what it is, and to be honest, I, Andy Zoltzmann, am not entirely sure if it is.

Does this world

exist?

It is very hard to tell if anything exists now.

This is partly because there is nothing about our world-renowned planet at the moment that suggests that anything genuinely believable, anything genuinely believable is actually and credibly happening.

And partly because I'm recording this at Old Trafford Cricket Ground, where from tomorrow morning I will be watching my 11th to 15th days of international cricket in an empty stadium out of the past 17 to 21 days of my life in my parallel existence as a cricket statistician.

To be honest, at the moment, A,

I've no idea if reality as a concept even exists, and B, that is nowhere near a high enough proportion of days watching cricket to help me get through the planet at the moment.

Reluctantly, therefore, buglers, for you, I will do my best to make sense of the rest of the world outside the cricket bubble and to help me in this malodorous task.

I'm joined from India by Anuvab Powell and from Australia.

Nothing can faze her.

It's Alice Fraser.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, both of you.

How are your bits of the world?

Anuvab.

Well,

you know,

thank you, Alice.

A couple of things.

You know, we are trying a unique medical strategy

because, you know, we're on the forefront of world medicine.

So we're trying this unique strategy with coronavirus cases having hit a million and a half in India.

And that strategy is called giving up.

know if

it's being employed elsewhere and also you know we're in the middle of the monsoons and the monsoons is a time in India where our well-known diseases show up, malaria, dengue.

This year both these diseases are quite upset because they've been upstaged by another one.

So malaria and dengue are really fighting for their pride of place because they've been with us for 20, 30, 50 years and they're feeling ignored and I feel bad for malaria and eggie because they usually fill our hospitals in July, and now they're not.

And they're not happy about that.

You may have noticed there was a little bit of a blockage, Andy, there between Anivab and I, whether we who should speak first.

Of course, that's part of modern politics because I'm not sure if I'm oppressing him as a white woman or if he's oppressing me as a man.

So we're both leaning too far.

Well, because I'm the winner.

I'd just like to say, I am the winner in both of those contests.

Do what the fk I say.

Correct, correct.

Also, because this is a little-known fact, Andy, that you also are an Indian man and an Australian woman while being a create English cricket commentator.

So,

you might be right.

I just don't know.

But to be honest, Andy Vab, I wasn't expecting this show to become a dengue rights

apologist, but you know, there we go.

Strange things happen.

In the bin this week,

a couple of sections in the bin, self-help books.

Now, in lockdown, we're all looking for ways of improving ourselves.

And as a free bugle giveaway,

we are allowing you to choose one of eight free self-help books by the influential political and corporate self-help writers Harpenden Clark and Arnelia Strigen.

Much loved by the rich and powerful people who shape our world today.

So you can choose from one of their best-selling titles, Who You Trunner Kid?

How to Tell the Right Lies to the Right People.

Shoot First, Avoid Questions Later, How to Slash the Tires on the Wheels of Justice.

That's a follow-up to the happy goldfish.

The Pessimism Projectile, How Spreading Gloom Can Make Your Failure Seem Like Success.

Drowning the Rhino, How to Clear the Last Obstacles to Your Personal Goals.

The Baby in the Bathwater, why making the right decision matters less than being seen to look like you're making a big decision.

The wisdom of the parrot, copying the originality of others and 15 other shortcuts to unearned success.

Sharpening the the finger, how to deflect blame and implicate others, and possibly their greatest work, Don't Shit in the Kitchen If You Don't Own a Puppy, the art of ensuring someone else will take your flack.

Also in the bin this week, a hobbies section.

Now, we've all taken up new hobbies during lockdown.

Some people have taken to building models like we used to as kids.

And to help you with this, we've got a construct your own audio replica of HMS Victory, Horatio Nelson's famous flagship.

And to start your sound warship, here is a creaking mast.

Next week, the mainsail.

You'll have a full audio HMS Victory by Christmas.

And the third section in the bin this week is the chin.

We start a series of fond looks back at the facial features that we are all missing in the era of the mask as we adapt to the temporarily tolerable abnormal.

This week, the chin, over the next few weeks, the cheek, the mouth, the nose, the septum, the dimple the

scraping the barrel a bit here the little bit under the bottom lip all those sections in the bin

Top story this week tension a common question this year Alice and Anivab is what the fk is going to happen to our planet over the next one five ten and a hundred years but also

How tense are you?

Now, I don't know how tense you've been feeling recently buglers.

I've been I think, this year, more tense than I've ever been on a broad scale.

If you add up all the tension that I've felt this year, it's probably already surpassed pretty much any other year.

I mean,

this has been prompted by things such as everything we know and love having been upheaved by cruel fate, and or the governmental three eyes, incompetence, intransigence, inertia, and inexplicably inexcusable enumeracy.

Anuvab, you live in India, which is not traditionally one of the

lowest strung nations in

terms of tension and relaxation.

How tense are you?

You know, I'm going to start with a personal anecdote.

I haven't been sleeping properly and there is a

video going around where

you can get good sleep if you listen to an audio book read out by Indian cricket fast bowler, retired fastbowler Kapil Dev.

And I tried listening to it and I couldn't sleep for two days.

So I

don't know how helpful it is.

I don't know.

But yeah, I mean, look, we're fine.

We're fine.

We're much better off than other countries because

we're, you know, we're bordered with China.

And, you know, as we all know, China is a very protective, loving, transparent nation.

And they won't allow anything to happen to India.

And the way they show that love is by taking over certain parts of our territory and, quote unquote, looking after it.

So, you know, again, I think we have a lot less to worry about.

And if more of our retired fast bowlers do get to sleep videos, I'll be fine.

I'll be fine.

Yeah, I'll be okay.

I mean, surely you'd expect Javagal Srinath to muscle into that market with, you know, maybe read out a classic Dickens short story or something.

We just don't know.

So, Buglers, I'll leave it for you to judge whether you personally are more tense, as tense or less tense than our old friend, the planet as a whole, or to give it its acronym, Topow.

And, well, the set of cards that Tepow has been dealt, well it certainly has China in its hand and that is not that's one for fans of 80s pop music and that is not an easy card to play.

Alice you are our

global geopolitical tension correspondent.

Bring us up to date with the latest China ructions.

Well the US is booting China out, which is to say the US has ordered China to close its consulate in Houston, Texas by Friday, which is being described as political provocation by people in Beijing.

The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the decision was taken because China was stealing intellectual property.

And then China replied by using its Chinese diplomat, Mr.

Ike Pompeii, to reply, you're stealing intellectual property.

Earlier in the day before the consulate shut down, unidentified individuals were filmed burning paper in bins in the Houston Building's courtyard.

To which I say, come on, if the Chinese who invented paper and also invented sneakily connecting data on people can't burn their secret data paper in bin fires.

Who can?

Exactly.

Can I just ask, you know, the Americans are giving the Chinese a very hard time for burning pieces of paper secretly.

A lot of notable citizens in the history of the world have done it.

In fact,

if you look at a town called Abbottabad in Pakistan, a gentleman called Osama bin Laden was also burning some documents.

And, you know, he seemed to have done it for years before he was discovered.

So, you know,

why this discrimination?

I don't understand.

Well, it's a particularly tense situation because, on one hand, Trump's anti-Chinese stance has involved stoking racist anti-Chinese sentiments, which is undeserved and unwarranted.

The Chinese government isn't stealing data, arresting journalists, sinusilli abusing Uyghur people in concentration camps and selling their hair on the open market because they're Chinese.

They're doing it because they're cs.

And if intersectional feminism has taught us nothing else, it's that cs can be any colour.

Yeah, and it is, I mean, it's for China as accused America of political provocation, which is like

a carrot complaining about a road cone being orange and pointy.

And

I guess the difference is China tends to do its political provocation rather more subtly than just chucking out, you know, closing down a consulate and chucking out diplomats.

I mean, China tends to use tactics such as inextricably weaving itself into the infrastructure and social fabric of other countries over several decades until by the time people start to think, hang on, was it really a good idea to sell off our national vital organs to an unaccountable global superpower?

Damn it, we should have sold them on to unaccountable global businesses and said, schoolboy era.

It's all too late, and we've forgotten the reason we started the process anyway, very much like this sentence which began 94 words ago, set 97 now, of course.

In fact, past 100 now, we have no choice but to keep the sentence going for as long as possible in the hope that some sense starts to emerge.

Can someone please interrupt me?

No.

No, but it is an absolutely accurate observation.

And he said over in the three and a half minute sentence,

In India, for example, you know, when-that's my brand.

Yeah,

I've been having to learn entirely new skills doing the cricket coverage.

I basically have sort of 30 seconds in between balls to get across a fact.

And

keeping things out of 30 seconds and having truth in it are not skills that I've honed over the years.

It's a tricky combination.

I mean, you know, like, for example, recently when the Chinese, you know, decided they wanted wanted to take care of a couple of Indian provinces, the Indians responded by communicating with each other, the Indian Defense Forces, on Chinese telephones over a Chinese network.

So, you know, that was always a sensible thing to do because we forgot that we let them in 30 years ago to build all that for us.

Sadly, Andy, my sentence was about

six seconds long.

That is traditionally called an own goal, but in the modern times it's called an owned goal.

The Chinese foreign ministry has condemned the move on Twitter, would you believe, and has said that its embassy in Washington has received death threats.

I mean, come on, come on, China.

It's a social media death threat.

I mean, that death threat is just the 21st century social media equivalent of the old, how do you do?

It's just a meaningless conversational icebreaker that doesn't actually require a response.

And incidentally, people have never tried to answer the question, how do you do?

It cannot possibly end well.

Apparently, Mike Pompeo has gotten in some trouble because he's been taking his dog for a walk, and his dog is called Pooh or Pooh Bear.

But Pooh is apparently the derogatory appellation levelled at President Xi by his political enemies in China.

So he's very offended by being associated with a dog because that's a very offensive thing in China to be associated with a dog who's called Pooh, which is also your name.

Oh no, wait till someone tells him what we call the shit.

I think this is one of the great benefits of the Chinese firewall, that certain things come to them late, like Twitter trolls.

Like whatever is going on in social media, it's going to hit them now.

Meanwhile, the UK government is preparing to blatantly ignore the belated report that the UK government blatantly ignored Kremlin interference in both the Scottish independence referendum and Brexit, which is a worrying situation.

Apparently, Stuart Hosey, who's a Scottish National Party MP, said the report reveals that no one in government knew if Russia interfered in or sought to influence the referendum because they did not want to know.

To which the UK government said, la la la, I'm not listening, I know you are, but what am I, dib dobs?

The last one in is a fake news egg, no take back C's times infinity plus one.

It's quite extraordinary, this report has been delayed for nine months, as we talked about recently on

the bugle.

And it was unable to establish whether or not Russia had attempted to influence the Brexit vote because the government quotes actively avoided looking for evidence for that Russian interference.

I guess as the old saying goes you can't be eaten by a crocodile if you shut your eyes and drape a towel over your face while sunbathing on the riverbank.

This is yet another example of British politics using a Photoshop selfie as a mirror.

See also Exhibit 1, How We View Our Own History and Exhibit 2 Statues That Have Ended Up in Harbours Recently.

And

I mean

for Downing Street the report said Downing Street showed a, quote, lack of curiosity over potential Russian meddling.

Now, some things I can understand people not having curiosity about, you know, the dimple patterns on golf balls, how many worms it would take to make a belt of worms for the moon, the military ambitions of Luxembourg, and why so few songs have been written about lettuce.

But whether Russia...

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Andy, how many worms would it take to make a belt around the room?

Well, look, I'm not saying it's not interesting.

I'm just saying I can understand if people don't give a shit.

However,

whether Russia might have tried to treat your democracy like Jim Henson used to treat frogs, I would say that's worth a look.

Definitely worth a look.

You know,

I have a question, Alice.

And English is my second language, as you know, and I often struggle with.

It's your second language of about 12.

Correct, correct, correct.

It's my 211th language that I'm speaking.

In Britain, English is ours.

For most of us, it's our second language out of one

so the word uh meddling you know I I was looking at the definition of the word meddling and would you say you know uh it loosely describes this as interfering now yes if two murderers show up doing something really well either first best second best or third best

if two people show up as murderers uh and go to a place called Salisbury and poison people,

would that be regarded as slightly interfering into the law and order of another country?

Would that be considered I know British subtlety is a thing which I'm unfamiliar with, but would that constitute as slight meddling?

Well, I I couldn't possibly answer that, Anuvab, because I was deliberately not listening to your question.

And yeah, there you go.

That's the easiest way the easiest way to deal with it.

You've just summarized that report exactly.

Exactly.

The thing's a lack of curiosity into obvious flaws and weaknesses in our political and economic structures and our current society and the history that shaped it is a fundamental core British value which explains for example our politics, economic, society and history.

And as Muddy Waters, the great American blues man said, you can't lose what you never had and similarly you can't answer a question that you actively chose not to ask.

Then they have to have a hashtag Andy.

You have to have a hashtag me too for politics.

You find that a hashtag makes people suddenly realize that they've been ignoring terrible misbehavior for generations.

You know, I often think about this in the context of empire.

I think in legal cases, there is a stipulation, right?

Like after 15, 20 years, there's a legal term that you can't try somebody because that stipulated time has passed.

And I figure with empire, if enough time has passed and people say

it didn't happen, it didn't happen.

Because if it just

not on the school history curriculum, it cannot possibly be real.

That is

written written in the Magna Carta.

The report also highlighted how dodgy Russian oligarchs were not just welcomed into London, but were then baked into the heart of society in a plutocracy pudding that will have inevitable digestive repercussions for our economy and society.

But still, at least, looking at the China and Russia stories, at least we've broken free of those pesky Europeans.

They were the real threat with their parliament and shit like that.

In completely unrelated news, a Mrs.

Lubov Chernukin, the wife of a former Russian finance minister and banker, has emerged as one of the largest donors in British political history.

She's been reported as paying £1.7 million to the Conservative Party for things such as dinner and/or tennis with senior politicians.

And if you, buglers, want to buy some or all of British democracy, please send in your bid and a 25-word explanation of why you want to subvert the democratic process to the Department for Undermining National Security and Independence, Westminster, London.

They might take a little while to get back to you.

They've They've got to work through a lot of applications.

Meanwhile, in hostage news, a gunman in Ukraine, armed with an automatic rifle and grenades, surrendered to police and released his 13 hostages after the country's president agreed to recommend the 2005 film starring Joachim Phoenix that was called Earthlings on a national platform, which I think is a beautiful story.

It's really nice to to see a hostage situation turn out well for all involved, though I feel that I'm going to have to expand one of my many life mottos.

I used to say, never trust a film recommendation someone saw on a plane or after a breakup.

I'm going to have to now add, or during a hostage situation.

Well, fortunately, all the hostages were released without injury following the film recommendation.

The hostage take was a man, an animal rights activist called Maxim Krivos.

And the film Earthlings is an animal rights rights documentary narrated by Joachim Phoenix but there were apparently some very in-depth negotiations and Ukrainian President Zelensky asked if he could recommend another Joachim Fenix film he suggested Gladiator but one of the hostage negotiators point out that everyone has seen Gladiator already so there wouldn't be any point.

The negotiator then apologised and suggested Quills instead but Krivosh said that the 2000 Marquis Lesade sort of biopic wasn't really a family film and he didn't think it had a broad enough appeal for his demands.

Zelensky said he'd seen the Dostoevsky adaptation Two Lovers that Phoenix starred in and quite liked it.

But Krivos said that he wasn't a fan of co-star Gwyneth Paltrow.

Both agreed that they didn't see what the fuss about the Joker was, and Krivos then went back to his initial recommendation of Earthlings because, quotes, let's not forget why we're here in the first place.

It's about animal rights, not Joaquin Phoenix.

Zelensky point-blank refused to also recommend Krivos' musical recommendation, Head Above Water, by Avril Levine, but said he would tweet a link to one of Levine's earlier albums and express regret that her relationship with Some 41's Derek Wibley had not lasted longer.

So the deal was reached.

Zelensky posted a video that everyone should watch Earthlings.

Also, by coincidence, everyone should watch Earthlings is something that's been said mockingly by all aliens over the past four years.

Krivos then gave himself up, the hostages were released, and Zelensky withdrew his post, which does not equate to him saying that industrialized animal cruelty is fine with him, and then insisted he does not do film requests.

Why can't all hostage crises be like that?

I hesitate to tell someone who's holding people hostage to to believe in themselves, but surely could have reached higher than a film recommendation.

Well,

before this podcast, I had to do this.

I saw, I've been watching this documentary.

It's on YouTube.

It's an a film recommendation and a bus pass home.

Sorry, carry on.

Yeah, no.

First of all, first of all, I I think both those things are a good suggestion, right?

Like,

when cinemas are shut, you have to promote movies somehow.

And I think kidnap, arson, loot are very good ways to promote films, you know, in the absence of just any sort of cinema.

And

to be honest with you, I've been watching this, and it's a really good documentary.

And I think if you can hold more world leaders at ransom and kidnap more people, I think more people would watch these sorts of documentaries.

I think this says more about documentary marketing than it does about anything else.

And Andy, you know, I think it's quite an achievement that you got hold of the negotiation transcripts and immediately translated from the Ukrainian for this audience.

Which is a testament to your Ukrainian live translation skills.

But I really hope Warner Brothers and various other studios and Amazon take note from this.

And, you know, in fact, there was an excellent Indian nature documentary made last year.

And I'm hoping some of my friends hold Prime Minister Modi hostage and recommend that this film be shown tonight at 8 o'clock.

Well, I mean, Hannibal, we made a two-part sort of comic documentary entitled Empirical Evidence for Radio 4.

I mean, it makes me feel a bit bad that this has never been used in hostage negotiations.

It makes me think that maybe we didn't make a good enough show.

This is the thing.

Sometimes, you know, when you force people to watch something, it could backfire.

So, you know, we might end up with fewer listeners than we started out, Andy.

Well, I have to say,

I am very bad at publicizing my own work, and I have been known to say, Who do I have to kill to get a front-page news story?

It turns out I don't have to kill anyone, I just have to threaten to kill 13 people.

I was looking up old studio advertising from the 1940s when Hollywood started making talking pictures.

And one of the ads they put up is, Would you watch this movie at gunpoint?

And

I think that's being tested now

In other Britain news, a committee of MPs has described the government's failure to plan in advance for the possibility of a pandemic as astonishing.

In a report that paints the Johnson Junta's response to the virus as, quotes, worse than a particularly shit student improv troop, if I may paraphrase slightly.

Oh, no, hang on, it does actually say that word for word.

The report goes on to recommend that the government tries to be, quotes, less shit in future future and stop being so useless as soon as possible.

The report suggested further changes to government procedure, including not being nakedly corrupt, giving at least half a shit about the future beyond the next general election, and trying to appoint cabinet ministers with some vague vestige of competence.

Johnson claimed that Britain's continent-leadingly useless response to the Covid crisis proved quotes the sheer might of our union,

very much putting the

into shite.

Well, you know, there's a huge controversy going on.

The coronavirus is almost forgotten because of this current crises we're in.

Netflix has launched a show about Indian matchmaking, and

it has sort of fueled a debate online and offline about the Indian arranged marriage culture.

The show is about a matchmaker getting together various potential brides and grooms around the world.

And one side of the debate are basically independent Indian women who are saying that this is regressive and old-fashioned.

And another side

where people are saying this is exactly how Indians get married.

But the dilemma I have is very specific.

They follow four or five characters who are looking for a life partner.

And there is a matchmaker who has resumes and she matches resumes.

And then based on the resumes, she sets up meetings and then they are free to decide if they want to be together.

There is one particular character, a lady in Houston, Texas of Indian origin looking for a life partner.

She's a lawyer, she's 34 and here is my question for you because this has been keeping me up nights no matter what couple Dave reads to me.

I haven't been able to sleep.

Think is this, she has the following requirements in a man.

She insists, of course, he has to be financially well off and in a good job, but not a lawyer because she's a lawyer.

But here are her basic requirements: first,

he cannot have a sense of humor.

She said she's against comedy of any kind.

And the second, which is the most interesting, and I want to know where you guys stand on this.

The second is, she said that she's a world traveler, and before the pandemic, her next trip was to see the salt plains of Bolivia.

And if this prospective suitor did not know of Bolivia or had any interest in the salt plains of Bolivia, he's rejected.

Now, the trick is: a suitor came along, and this is where it got really complicated.

He had no sense of humor, and he said that up front.

He said, I'm not into comedy, I hate comedians, so great.

His second thing was, and this was a really complicated man.

Exactly.

He's an ideal man, Alice.

Now, he said, Alice, Andy, that he had been to the Bolivian salt plains and and he hated it.

And now this lady's dilemma was, is he still a travel enthusiast if he's been there?

Or was he a travel enthusiast in the past?

So India is going crazy because half of India is saying, well, that's like saying Sachin Tendulka was a cricketer, but now he's just a guy that does baking powder ads on television.

So who is he?

And most, most, and lots of people are saying he's always a cricketer.

So should this lady reject this man, accept this man?

Because on paper, he fulfills all the criteria, even though not necessarily the timeline.

What do you guys think?

Well, I mean, obviously, you know, the Bolivian salt planes are right up there with the best salt planes you can get.

But, you know,

does this guy just hate all salt planes, or does he hate this one specifically because it's

in Bolivia?

It's very hard to know whose side to take on this.

The one thing you know is that when he says that he doesn't like the Bolivian salt planes, he's not joking.

Very earnest, exactly.

Very trustworthy, very earnest.

And he said, he said he despises humour, so he's not lying about this.

It does make you think then, are the Bolivian salt planes incredibly funny?

Is this why he hated them?

But they are in fact the funniest salt planes that you can find.

They're really funny, but the humours.

they're very funny, but the humour's really dry.

Yay!

Oh, I think we can end this podcast now and for all time after that, Alex.

Yeah.

And Alice,

you can absolutely be friends with this lady in Houston because she said specifically: the thing I hate most in comedy is puns.

So, I mean, in Indian sort of wedding culture,

weddings often take sort of a huge amount of time, don't they?

They can be kind of week-long extravaganzas, is that right?

No, it's, I mean, I don't know, Andy.

Like for my wedding, it was very intimate.

It was my family, my wife's family, and only a couple of thousand people, including my father's old house asbestos supplier.

So,

I mean, I don't know.

I mean, people say they're large weddings, but I didn't get to see that, really.

Right.

Because,

you know, it's not, we're not really used to the week-long extravaganza of ostentatious success here.

I mean, my own wedding was, well, it's been a sixteen year long extravaganza of unstoppable husbanding perfection.

So it's very

different ways of going about things.

Exactly, exactly.

And it always

feels good, you know, when the word intimate is defined differently in many cultures.

I was invited to a delhi wedding and it said an intimate gathering of five thousand people.

So um you know, I think I think it's really how you define things like meddling.

It's about definition, really.

If if I heard an intimate gathering of five thousand people, I would immediately think five thousand people with no trousers on.

Actually, that reminds me.

I'm a fan

intimate.

Well, those sorts of weddings, I think, happen

I don't think they're called weddings, Alice.

I think they're a different gathering of

but but you know, this wasn't on the Netflix show, but I would love to know what you guys think of this.

Uh a recent trend has started because as you know, Indian weddings are lavish and extravagant and this matchmaking show leads to these extravagant weddings, and they don't show the weddings on the show.

But a trend that started in the last few years is not only extravagant weddings for 5,000 people in India, but also theme weddings.

Delhi last year had the following themes at the wedding: a mafia-themed wedding.

So, the bride at a group side is supposed to dress as mafia.

And this was my favorite, the

1970s Indian emergency themed wedding,

where people

dressed like they were under a socialist emergency period.

And I was intrigued, you know, but this is a private wedding of only 7,000 people, so I wasn't shown any photographs.

But I've been obsessing about wedding platters that do themed weddings.

So I hope Netflix's next show is about that.

Ludicrous plutocracy news now.

It was reported that Amazon boss Jeff Bezos earned $10 billion on Monday, according to the Guardian newspaper.

$10 billion

in a day.

Now that seems, I mean, that's a pretty tidy daily rate.

It's three times what I'm getting paid by the BBC for cricket statistics.

And to put it in context,

$10 billion in a day.

That's enough to buy every single person in the world a good-sized bag of carrots or to buy a brand new $2.5 and a half million dollar Ferrari F60 America supercar for every single medical professional in Malawi and have enough left over to buy them all a half a million dollar Dodge Tomahawk superbike as well.

It's enough in a day to pay for two-thirds of an Olympics and an extravagant London-style Olympics as well.

Or you could buy a mid-range county cricketer on a 125,000-year contract, or you could buy a straw of decent quality bull semen for every person in South America.

Or

you could build eight functioning replicas of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

That's what he earned in a day.

In a day.

Ten billion dollars in a day is such an amount of money that it's difficult to believe that the person who is earning that money isn't impacted in a moral way.

Like that there's no moral.

Either you think he's a very good person or you think he's a very bad person, but there's no way that $10 billion is morally neutral.

Also, I think that it sets new standards for what billionaire oligarchs should aim for.

Because I think Elon Musk will look at that and say, why not $10 billion in a minute?

They say for most people, aim for the moon, but for billionaire oligarchs, they say, aim at the earth from the moon

with your laser.

I don't know actually if you if you got all those straws of bull semen that's a technical term for

a bit of bull semen apparently in the bull semen industry as

my increasingly dubious internet search record would testify.

I don't know if you laid them end to end whether that would reach the moon or not.

I don't know.

25 bucks apart.

I'd drop the moon right in its worm belt.

I love the fact that Andy is still obsessed with what to do with the 10 billion.

It could explain why we don't have 10 billion.

It's because we do silly things with it.

All around

the cricket grounds that are being used for this biosecure cricket series,

there are little graphics to try and show you

how far you should be socially distancing.

And rather than just saying two meters, it's got cricket graphics of cricket bats.

So you know you have to stay two and a bit cricket bat lengths apart from each other.

Wait, wait, Andy, I need to know this.

I need to know this.

Are the cricket bats just in outline or are they filled with oil?

Well, that's going back deep into bugle history.

The cricket bat full of oil is

a universally acknowledged unit of measurement.

But I'm just glad that it's been

picked up on, but it's the only language I understand.

understand.

And in beautiful, wonderful, lovely news, Captain Tom Moore is now sir, Captain.

Captain Sir Tom, sir, Captain Tom, Sir Moore.

He's more of a sir than he is a captain now because he was knighted by the Queen in the first socially distanced knighting.

So the Queen and Captain Tom Moore did a very socially responsible knighting where normally you would kneel down in front of the queen and she would tap you on each shoulder with a sword.

In this instance,

Tom and the Queen stood on the top of a hill silhouetted by the rising sun.

So it looked like the queen was dubbing him on both shoulders, but actually she was standing six feet to the left of him.

And then they pretended to kiss.

And then she...

Then she turned around and made it look like someone was making out with her by rubbing her own shoulders with her hands.

Alice just described the shooting of every Bollywood movie during the coronavirus.

Can I just say,

I tried to walk around the garden

and I gave up after three and a half rounds.

So I think this deserves way more than a knighthood.

It's,

yeah, I couldn't even walk half my age around the garden and I'm 44.

I mean, it was a better solution than many of the other socially distanced knighting options, such as

one of the ones that was on the table was the queen knighting him by spear.

Can they not just get her a

two-metre-long sword?

That must be possible, isn't it?

You'd have thought, you know, just rub some antiseptic on it at the end.

I mean, she she's she still benches 380.

She could easily lift a two-metre-long sword.

Sorry, when you said antiseptic on the end, I thought you meant as a lubricant.

So I have to ask this question.

I've wanted to ask it forever.

Andy, were you to be ever knighted?

Yes.

I think about this a lot.

I know it comes up a lot, Andy.

Would you want a sword or a cricket bat?

Well, I mean, I don't think I'd like

a sword.

There's something about people coming at me with sharpened blades that I've been slightly wary of since I was approximately eight days old.

So,

yeah, I mean,

a cricket bat would be.

I mean,

it's obviously something that I do, you know, when you're in my position as

a podcaster and occasional appear on radio, you do have to think about your inevitable knighthood.

Yes.

You know, so

I don't know.

I mean, I think it would be a shame.

It always seems rather passive.

It would be nice to sort of knight the queen back in recognition of everything that...

Of all the knightings.

Yeah.

Yeah, but maybe with a...

That's like when somebody says happy birthday and you say, and to you too.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, she must be bored of...

No one ever taps her on the shoulder with a sword.

She must wonder what it's like.

Do all that.

I mean, what's all the fuss about?

All these people queuing up to be tapped on the shoulder with a sword.

Let her experience that joy.

Yes, fair enough.

Everybody who I know who has ever met the Queen in the course of some sort of official event has a story about how they made a fool of themselves in some way.

So from the Queen's perspective, everyone must just be constantly falling over and shitting themselves.

Like she lives in a world of idiots.

Does she ever like do that twirl her sword around like a musketeer beforehand just to

spice things up?

I don't know.

I feel sorry for her.

It'll all be lightsabers by the the end of the decade, anyway, on health and safety grounds.

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

Anuvabala, thanks for bringing me up to date with what's happening outside

the crickety world that I've been inhabiting.

I'm recording this in the corner of a hotel room

with a beautiful view of a car park full of cars owned by cricketers.

So

it's a strange life at the moment.

Any

shows or anything to plug for our listeners?

I have a show at the Factory Theatre in Sydney on the 27th of July, whatever this month is.

It will be streaming live and also will be live.

It will be both live and streaming live.

You can have access to that if you're awake at the time that it's on, which you can find out by googling it.

Also, my special savage is available on Amazon Prime.

And there's this daily podcast that I have access to.

It comes to my email inbox from an alternate dimension, and it's called The Last Post.

Sounds intriguing.

Anubab?

Well,

I have an ongoing podcast every Thursday on Spotify called Our Last Week, where you were kind enough to stump us with a conundrum.

We try and answer conundrums from people around the world.

We're awaiting a conundrum from a very talented lady called Alice Fraser, who's supposed to send us a conundrum.

But while we wait, I will be doing the podcast from the Bolivian Salt Flats,

where you will find me now indefinitely.

Great acoustic there, I've heard.

If you want to hear more of me, I will be analysing the decaying averages of some of England's leading batsmen over the next five days on BBC cricket coverage.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Until next time, 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.