Bugle 4062 – Bullwinkle

The Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4062 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world for the week beginning Monday the 19th of March 2018.

I am Andy Zoltzmann and I'm here in London because because of

well a series of unlikely coincidences stretching back what around about 100,000 years now that applies to both me and London could so easily have turned out very differently on both accounts particularly if those two horny proto-humans hadn't met at that student disco in 86,000 BC

I have not been poisoned by the Russian government which is nice but nor coincidentally have I definitely not been poisoned by the Russian government which is slightly concerning but we're going to push on with the show nonetheless and joining me this week, for the first time in, well, frankly, too long, all the way from New York City, which is currently still in the USA, but could easily be coming home to the mothership once we get Empire Mark II up and running next year, it is Hari Kondabolu.

Oh, hello, Andy.

I just want to quickly say that the rumors regarding my death are incorrect,

and I would like to apologize for that disappointment.

Oh, right, okay.

Well, apology very much accepted.

I will cease putting putting out those tweets.

But

have you still got time to cancel the funeral?

Because I've ordered a hell of a lot of sandwiches for it.

Ha!

How have you been?

Other than not dead, which is great news.

I mean, I'm always kind of at a medium, so it's okay.

That's a good way to be, isn't it?

You have to stick it a steady...

Steady six out of ten.

Well, yeah, I mean, antidepressants keep it that way.

What a happy start to the show.

This is why I'm the fifth most popular bugle host.

We are recording on the 16th of March on this day.

This is the anniversary of when Mississippi became the final state to formally ratify the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.

Do you know what year that was in, Hari?

That Mississippi

ratified that amendment.

1987?

It was 1995.

Oh my God.

Which seems a little on the late side of things, but I guess you've got to

do all the background reading, just in case.

On this day in 1926, the first ever liquid-fueled rocket was fired by Robert H.

Goddard.

That's 92 years ago today.

You don't need to be a rocket historian to know that.

You just need access to a basic search engine.

The flight of the first ever liquid-fueled rocket lasted 2.5 seconds.

It reached an altitude of 13 meters and covered a distance of 60 meters in those two and a half seconds before crashing into some cabbages.

Coincidentally, that's the same average height, distance, and speed that a household cat jumps when Steve Bannon tries to stroke it.

And but you know, just 43 years after that

60 metre flight, Neil Armstrong went six and a half million times as far and landed on a giant cabbage, the moon.

The 17th of March will be the anniversary of the day in the year 180 that Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor, died, the self-styled pin-up boy of Stoic philosophy.

He preached self-restraint, duty, respect for others.

But then again, he did live before social media and the 24-hour news cycle.

So it was a bit f ⁇ ing easy then, Marky, wasn't it?

Try that shit now, mate.

Good luck.

He was succeeded by Commodus.

the Emperor Commodus, who of course, as we all know, ended up being killed in the Colosseum live by Maximus Decimus Meridius in front front of a baying crowd and hundreds of film cameras.

Commodus, according to history via Wikipedia, did in fact fight in the arena.

That was true.

His death might have been slightly exaggerated in that film.

And he would charge Rome one million sesterces for the privilege of watching him fight, which in modern money is, let me just quickly do the sum.

A f of a lot.

And he also would club people to death whilst pretending they were giants.

And on one specific day, he killed a hundred lions.

And also he once decapitated an ostrich with a special dart because why the hell not when you're emperor and slayed a giraffe just because it was tall.

And that does raise the question.

Hari, would you rather have him as your president now than Donald Trump?

Commodus versus Trump.

Oh, Commodus.

Without a doubt.

Commodus doesn't know how to tweet.

He is completely unfamiliar with modern technology.

That's exactly what we need right now.

Would you like to see Donald Trump slay a hundred lions?

Would that make you respect him more or less?

I would like him to attempt it.

Well, I'll make a few calls and see what I can make happen.

And on the 19th of March, which is Monday this year, in 1649, the House of Commons in England passed an Act abolishing the House of Lords, declaring it to be useless and dangerous to the people of England.

Still going through the committee committee stage of that one.

Legislation can be a very, very slow process.

As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin and ahead of my impending trip to the southern hemisphere to perform my new show, Right Questions, Wrong Answers, in Melbourne, Sydney, Wellington, and Auckland with some live bugles along the way.

In the bin this week is a southern hemisphere section and in which we investigate, given that there is space for a whole new continent in the southern hemisphere, where should it go?

Should we fill up that massive gap in the Pacific, or maybe something in the Indian Ocean so that it's closer to the profitable Middle East region, or maybe the southern Atlantic, which frankly could do with a bit of a refit and a modernization?

Or controversially, has the southern hemisphere had its day?

It's changed very little as a hemisphere for ages, leaving it way behind the north in terms of population, economic power, and Olympic medals.

So, should we even keep it?

Is it time for this planet to shear in half?

Text us.

Your view.

Don't do that.

Should Antarctica be shared more equally?

Or our pole up here has no land at all and that's causing problems.

Also we asked the southern hemisphere why did you do what you did to Amelia Earhart, you sexist monsters?

And given that it's well known that water in the southern hemisphere flows from the plughole back up into the tap, did you also know that the bubbles in fizzy drinks in the southern hemisphere are in fact upside down?

It's very hard to tell but it is technically a fact.

Also we have a special feature on southern hemisphere wildlife, penguins.

Fact or fiction?

What the f is up with kangaroos?

And why were crocodiles exempted under the UN Convention of Unnecessarily Aggressive Species?

Brackett's southern hemisphere only version.

That section in the B

top story this week: Russia versus the world.

And well, exciting times here in England, Hari.

We appear to have gone back in time to the Cold War with

Russia allegedly attempting to bump off one of its own spies in the sleepy city of Salisbury.

These are

strange times, as we say, pretty much every week on this show.

And it appears to have led to a full-scale Cold War-style, tit-for-tat

spy expulsion exchange.

And I mean, there's a lot of nostalgia flying around, really, for the Cold War, much amidst the slight concern about people using nerve agents on the streets of a British town.

I mean, this is the biggest Russian spy scandal since that spy Anna Chapman was caught in the U.S.

Remember her?

And then she later

posed for Playboy.

And before that scandal, there was that other

scandal with the two spies who tried to catch the talking moose.

It was Boris and Natasha, I believe.

It's a bullwinkle joke.

It's a reference to

an American cartoon.

There's not enough bullwinkle jokes on this podcast, Hari, and I thank you from the bottom of my head.

If you're going to do a Russian spy story, of course a bullwinkle joke is going to make its way in.

I think that's...

There's no choice.

I mean,

just because most of the listeners will have no idea what I'm talking about, that's not my fault.

No.

I mean, anything with the word bull in it should fit in right on this show.

No complaints.

I mean, it's been a while, to be honest, since I even thought of the glorious combination of syllables that is bullwinkle, which

does sound like a tremendous euphemism for some hideously embarrassing medical condition.

But

I mean, thanks for bringing it back.

Do we know how

Rocky and Bullwinkle are getting on these days?

They're cartoons, Andy.

Right.

I mean, because a lot of cartoon characters that were popular back in the day have fallen on hard times.

And

many of them are in rehab.

Some have turned to prostitution.

I mean, I've no idea what's happened

to those two.

I mean, Russia's back in right now, man.

I think this is the time for the comeback.

This is it.

This is what they've been waiting for, the Bullwinkle people.

British politicians have understandably reacted strongly to what appears to be, but may not absolutely definitely be, the actions of the Russian state in release using a nerve agent on British soil.

The Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, used possibly the strongest words you can use in international diplomacy when he told Russia to go away and shut up.

No one messes with Britain, Putin.

No one.

Take that.

Sit down.

Boris Johnson

also

came out strongly.

against Russia, in which

he had the concrete proof of Russia's guilt guilt in this matter, Hari.

He said, there is something in the kind of smug, sarcastic response that we've heard from Russia that indicates their fundamental guilt.

They're being slammed for smugness by Boris Johnson.

Again, that is like being slammed for painting Willies on a ceiling by Michelangelo, as I may have said before.

Also, is he addressing Russia as if it was a single entity and not a collection of human beings?

Yes, I think so.

I mean, to be honest, it is basically Putin with 180 million barnacles stuck to him.

But if excessive smugness is an indicator of guilt for a crime, what the f has Boris Johnson been doing for the last 30 years?

Dig up his patio.

There must be an absolute grandmother load of dirt

that he is covering up.

I mean, there is one possible explanation for this,

the way that Boris Boris Johnson interpreted

Russia's reaction as being smug.

That he thought he was watching the news, but had not in fact switched his television on and was just seeing his own reflection in the screen.

Jeremy Corbyn, by contrast, was heavily criticised for his underreaction to the incidents.

He expressed outrage, called for a strong British and international multilateral response.

and expressed some doubt that it was definitely 100%

an action of the Russian government, which is basically exactly what Theresa May did.

But because it was Jeremy Corbyn, the response was...

Lenin alert, Lenin alert.

Attention, comie, attention, comie, Lenin alert.

The Bolsheviks are at the gate.

Lenin alert, Lenin alert.

But I guess the response to that is the time for underreaction has passed, Hari.

This is the 21st century.

This is the age of rushing to judgment and over-egging as many political puddings as possible.

Let us state facts.

This was an act of war, a direct attack on British hard-working family values.

What if Her Majesty the Queen had been out having a mid-range disappointing pizza in a chain restaurant in Salisbury that afternoon?

What then?

Today, they're targeting a specific ex-boy in a clumsy 1970s kind of way, putting innocent bystanders at risk in their infantile internal blood feuds.

We all know that this inevitably leads to a full-scale land and sea invasion by the full might of the Soviet Red Army and Red Navy.

Unless we either preemptively invade Russia now with whatever is left of our armed forces that aren't needed to help at sporting events, plus any particularly pugnacious stag parties that fancy a bit of a rumble, or we expel 23 diplomats.

We've gone for option B and telling them to go away and shut up.

What's the reaction in America been to

because Donald Trump hasn't come out quite as strongly against

Putin and Russia as he tends to whenever someone, a bit of Brown, does something a bit naughty in Britain.

It hasn't really been a story here for a few reasons.

I think, first of all, is that it doesn't involve us.

Right.

Nobody was killed here, so therefore it's less important.

Also, nobody knows what Sal

is it Salisbury?

Yes.

I mean, I think people, if they did hear about that, they would immediately think of the stake.

Again, it doesn't connect to us in any way.

What I find most amazing about the story is that these former Russian spies were attacked with Novichik, which is a nerve agent created by the Russians, and only they have this nerve agent, yet they still deny it was them, which makes me believe that Putin is using Trump's favorite strategy, which is the it wasn't me by shaggy excuse,

which despite Kant,

despite clear evidence, for example,

you know,

banging on the bathroom floor with someone who isn't your partner, you still say it wasn't me.

Well, I mean, admittedly, Russia does have form,

but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are definitely guilty.

I mean, the way I see it.

Say in the 1990s, if you live next door to the Olympic javelin champion Jan Zelezny, and his garden backed onto yours and wasn't wasn't quite long enough for his javelin practice sessions.

And he kept popping around to your house to say, please going to have my javelin back.

And then one day a javelin landed on your lawn.

It wouldn't necessarily mean that Jan Zelezny had thrown that javelin,

but if he turned up looking guilty, then maybe you would be right to have your suspicions.

That is.

All I'm saying is, don't ever live next door to a professional javelin thrower.

It's a recipe for disaster.

I'll be honest with you, you, Andy, I saw that joke coming a million miles away.

I immediately thought he's going to go into a javelin analogy.

There's no other place for that.

I mean I guess we do have to, you know, in the modern age, accept that

Moscow should be treated as guilty until proven very slightly less guilty.

But it's led to some slightly panicked overreactions, I fear.

Didn't

the British say that they weren't going to play in the World Cup?

Wasn't that the threat that they would pull out of the World Cup in Russia because of this?

There was a suggestion of that, but that is not so much a threat against Russia as a threat against ourselves and the football-loving football fans of the United Kingdom.

Because it's not just England fans that this is going to affect, England pulling out of the World Cup, because none of the other nations of the UK qualified for the World Cup.

And yet,

the highlight of every four years of international football for Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish football fans is seeing England England knocked out of a World Cup in humiliating, embarrassing circumstances.

We cannot deprive them of that moment of happiness.

Well, that's what I don't get.

Like, how is that a threat?

Because they, you know, I don't know much about European soccer, but I do know that

they lose every World Cup.

So if a tree falls in a forest, you know what I mean?

Yes.

Salisbury is an odd place for a major international diplomatic incident.

Let me fill fill in some of the gaps for you, Harry.

I have a special Salisbury fact file.

Salisbury is an old city in southern England that is best known for three things.

Its cathedral, its cathedral, and a painting of its cathedral by John Constable.

Some believe that the reason the Soviet army invaded Salisbury was because of the British record-holding cathedral spire.

At 123 meters tall, it's the highest in the United Kingdom and it's shaped a bit like it might be concealing a nuclear warhead, as indeed so many church spires are.

The cathedral contains a copy of the Magna Carta, the 1215 classic constitutional text that people in Britain like to bang on about without really knowing much about what it really said, which is mostly quite boring from what I skim read about it in an article a couple of years ago.

The Magna Carta, the foundation of our democratic rights, allows all British people the right to strap a wolf to each of their feet.

The average person in Salisbury is between 0.7 and 2.5 metres tall, although some are temporarily at least even shorter, though these small individuals are often hidden away from public scrutiny in a pram or something.

And there is one guy who likes to stand on a bench and jump up and down shouting, I'm a giant.

There's your Salisbury fact box.

Why would they attack Salisbury?

It's kind of weird.

If that happened in the U.S., that would be horrendous because there's all these states in the middle of the country that think they're going to be attacked all the time.

And so they get all this money from Homeland Security, but nothing's ever happened.

If there was an attack in any way in a part of the country that I find insignificant, which is anywhere between the coasts, I mean, that would be

catastrophic.

American news break.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson fired.

No one is surprised, including Rex Tillerson.

So Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State,

former Secretary of State of the United States, was fired via Twitter by Donald Trump, which I know doesn't sound particularly dignified or classy, but it's actually one of his classier moves, if you remember,

because he used to have a TV show where he would publicly fire and humiliate people weekly.

So him only tweeting it is pretty good.

Right.

Because it's not been generally described as a behavioral step up to fire the Secretary of State by Twitter.

I mean, but it's interesting.

I mean, is this signs that Trump has been gradually civilized the further he gets away from being a reality TV show

host?

Well, no, because he's still dealing with potentially paying off a pornographic film actress to hide an affair that he was having with his

during his wife's pregnancy.

Also, potentially rigging the American election with the help of the Russians.

Oh, and there's a bunch of other stuff I don't have time to do.

But apart from that.

Yeah.

Although there's progress then.

Yes.

To fire someone by Twitter, to me, it's disappointing.

I don't know what's wrong with a public headbutt.

Or he could have just had

Tillerson kidnapped by mafia goons, bundled into the back of a truck, driven out to the Rocky Mountains and dumped in a forest.

It would have been more honest, more dignified, and in some ways more decisive in terms of Trump's leadership.

Are you going to

miss Big Rex?

He seems to be viewed as one of the worst Secretary of States in American history.

You know,

yes and no.

I will miss him because he said the most honest thing that anyone in the administration has said, which is that Trump is a moron.

He did it behind closed doors.

Of course, it leaked, because everything leaks with this administration, but it was refreshing to hear.

Also, you know, of course I was very cynical about him because he was the chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil.

That was his previous political experience, which is not political.

And he was recommended by Condoleezza Rice, so that's not a good sign.

So initially, I scoffed at it, but when you think about it, it's the most transparent thing I've ever seen in American politics.

Because before, we'd say things like, no, our foreign policy choices have nothing to do with our quest for oil.

And with Tillerson, it was like, f it, an oil executive is more efficient for our needs.

Like, you have to respect they it's it is the most direct like yeah yeah this is what we're doing and we're gonna do it better than we used to do it also I like the job he was fired from a job that was greasier than his old job which was working for oil

I mean the the low opinion in which Tillerson appears to be held broadly in America is proved by this fact that was out in the news today.

Apparently fewer than 2% of American 18 to 21-year-olds have a tattoo of Rex Tillerson.

Wow.

So that compares unfavorably with the 4.5%

of the same age bracket who had a Madeleine Albright tattoo when she was Secretary of State, and 3.7% for George P.

Schultz in the 1980s.

And given that there were far fewer tattoos generally then, those really are harrowing statistics.

The record, of course, an astonishing 26% of all 18 to 21-year-old Americans had a tattoo of Cordell Hull in the Roosevelt years.

Hamilton Fish, who was Secretary of State from 1869

to 1877, still clucks up a surprising 1.3%, although only if you count tattoos of Fish as tributes to the former governor of New York.

In terms of Trump's presidency, Hari, it does appear to continue to tiptoe its way through the intricate maze of domestic and international politics like a cocaine-addled scimitar-wielding hippopotamus through an elderly nun's birthday picnic.

It's getting increasingly noisy and increasingly messy, and the only way to justify it for the hippopotamus is to keep behaving in exactly the same way until the scientists and the hippopomaticians agree that this is, in fact, just the normal way that hippopotamuses behave.

And f ⁇ those greedy nuns, they should never have built their convent on what is now a free-range hippo zone.

It's very hard to see a long-term vision or pattern emerging.

It just seems to be, you know, in terms of long-term planning, does it ever go more than about eight seconds ahead?

It's like an inverse goldfish.

It seems like Captain Scott turning up

at the Antarctic, leaping out of his boat in a t-shirt and shorts, running up to the nearest penguin, punching it repeatedly in the face until it dies, and then screaming, we're winning!

We're wounding up!

We are winning!

I mean, I stopped thinking about the long term once Trump got elected.

I mean, who's thinking about the long term?

You know, every day there's a thought of imminent death.

What fool is

investing in the long term right now?

Trump's politics, I mean, he does appear to,

you know, sort of react in the moment.

They can appear to be somewhat akin to an inflatable penis strapped to a pole on a windy day.

Whichever way the wind's blowing, just get out of the way.

Of all the imagery, that's the one I lost it.

That's the hippo one I held it together, but that, for some reason.

So into Rex Tillerson's still warm diplomatic jockstrap steps Mike Pompeo, a Trump loyalist, the thinking

sycophant, a man who in the past has said, Jesus Christ is truly the only solution for our world.

Those words, to be honest, are looking truer and truer by the f ⁇ ing day.

I mean, that seems like lazy CIA-ing.

Like, you're supposed to be finding solutions and like real like nitty-gritty kind of things and things that would help inform policy by what you're discovering and doing.

And his answer is Jesus, which anyone, anyone can have that answer.

Anyone.

You don't need to be trained to be like, oh, what are you going to do?

Well, Jesus.

I mean, I think one of the bigger stories here, too, is that because Mike Pompeo is taking the Secretary of State job, the CIA now has a woman, Gina Haspel, as the first ever CIA head, which is very important in addition to it being historic.

It's Trump's proof that he is not sexist.

Right.

There's a quote.

He said, quote, I hand-picked her, and that doesn't mean I grabbed her vagina.

So, I mean, she's broken through

the glass ceiling

to be the first female CIA head.

And I guess as head of the CIA, we'll probably then use the glass shards from that ceiling to torture confessions out of

terrorist suspects.

What's

her background?

She was number two at the CIA, and now she's number one.

So

that's a logical career step, I guess.

Yeah, yeah.

In many ways.

There have been

other Trumpian women in the news,

including Stormy Daniels,

the

alleged

star of pornographia

with whom Mr.

Trump may have

thrunkled his Garjulians some years ago.

I guess the question is: would Stormy Daniels be a more informed education secretary than Betsy DeVos?

And could she do a better job in the State Department than Rex Tillerson did?

And if the people of America were given a choice now between Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump, who would they pick?

Oh, I mean, they would pick Stormy Daniels.

The American people are very disappointing.

And they're not worried about qualifications, qualifications,

you know, for losers.

They're for nerds.

I think Stormy...

And honestly, Stormy Daniels, why couldn't she be Secretary of State?

She has no foreign policy experience.

She's never worked in any kind of political office.

She's completely qualified.

That's the way politics is going, isn't it?

The Betsy DeVos interview that had

considerable

viral traction

in the news.

Can you just talk us through that?

She's the education secretary who appears to

really have

no real qualification to be education secretary other than the fact that she really illustrates on an almost hourly basis the dangers of clearly not having ever paid any attention to any teachers.

Yes, that is correct.

She grew up incredibly wealthy and then she married somebody who was incredibly wealthy.

She's never actually worked in the field.

She believes in charter schools and that public money that goes to public schools, which are already underfunded, should go into these charter schools and parents, especially poor parents, should have a choice where to send

their kids.

What that does do is again destroy public school education.

And so she was asked about that because she, you know, her home state's Michigan.

And Leslie Stahl asked her on 60 Minutes, well,

hasn't your state gotten worse

in public school education since you started implementing these plans when you were there?

And

she did not know the answer.

And then

she was asked if she had gone to any of the underperforming schools in Michigan, her home state, and she had not.

And Leslie Stahl said maybe she should.

And

Betsy DeVos said, yeah, that might be a good idea.

So essentially, Betsy DeVos sounded like someone who was educated in a public school that was now broke because of Betsy DeVos.

Well, she said she hadn't intentionally visited underperforming schools, which does suggest that there may have been accidental visits or more likely that she'd visited high-performing schools, which through just a few minutes, minutes, seconds even of contact with Betsy DeVos, instantaneously became underperforming schools through the sheer force of her aura of incompetence.

Trump to meet Kim Jong-un.

The end is near.

Bro, that's a bit worrying.

Are you going to elaborate on the end being near?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I suppose.

So Donald Trump agreed to meet with Kim Jong-un, the head of North Korea, without his cabinet really knowing or approving it.

He was just like, f it, I can put the fate of the world in my hands because of my top negotiating skills.

So what I'm assuming is this will end with the first Trump hotel in North Korea.

I mean, there's no other, I mean, everything he's negotiated for.

Like, he keeps talking about his negotiating skills, but he's only really negotiated for Trump products.

They have a lot in common.

Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump have a lot in common.

Their father gave them a lot to get started.

Terrible haircuts.

I mean, they're sounding also like Jesus Christ there as well.

So

the father gave them a lot and bad hair.

Jesus did not have bad hair.

Well, maybe he did.

We don't know.

Well,

that Argentinian 1970s football.

Okay, I'll withdraw that.

It's suitable.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I thought you said Jesus.

I thought you said Bjorn Borg.

They're very much interchangeable in real world.

So yeah, father gave them a lot to get started.

Both of them peaked early, really.

And left the game way too soon.

Father gave them a lot to get started.

They had terrible haircuts, wives who were seemingly out of their league.

And also, they both have the ability to destroy the world.

So this makes sense.

Yeah, this makes sense in the way that nothing makes sense anymore.

World happiness rankings news now and well, bad news for both of us, Hari.

USA and and the UK on relegation form when it comes to national happiness in the latest World Happiness Rankings.

USA 18th, UK 19th, and going with the 20-team Premier League structure.

That puts us both in the relegation zone with just a few weeks left.

of the season.

Often when this happens to a club, they change their manager

in a panic effort to bump themselves up the league.

I think that could probably do both of us the world of good.

The winners, Finland.

Finland is officially the happiest country in the world.

Quite how that's happened.

It must be, I mean, everyone loves a lake, but there's got to be more to it than that.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I think there's no other explanation for this amount of happiness other than they have a nationwide nuclear bunker.

There's no other way that they could feel this happen.

The world is more insecure and scared about the present and future than ever before and they're happier than everyone else they have a nuclear bunker

well you look at the top four uh it's uh finland norway denmark uh iceland sweden also sneaked into the uh

into the into the top ten uh it's almost like

not having wars, famines, and economic catastrophes makes a nation slightly happier.

I don't know if

the science backs that up.

Finland's GDP per capita though is significantly lower than the USA but according to one of the people quoted

is

Finland is good at translating wealth into well-being

which sounds to me just like a country that is boring.

Not corruption.

Boring.

Good public health.

Socially tolerant support for the less fortunate.

Boring, boring, boring.

You might be the happiest nation in the world Finland, but imagine the life of a Finnish newsreader.

Oh, my God.

I mean, it must be terrible.

The lake was wet today, and it's cold and winter.

I mean, Finland barely overtook Norway as the happiest country.

Like, barely.

The Norwegians went down, and there is a single man to blame.

His name is Perry Larson.

On December 31st, 2017, last day of the year, Perry had a bad day after being unable to find his wristwatch.

That single shift in mood was just enough for the Finns to get by the Norwegians.

He released a statement later.

This is true, Andy.

This is real.

He released a statement.

He said, I am so sorry for my behavior.

A total overreaction.

I could have just checked my cell phone for the time like normal people.

I'm so sorry.

All this disappointment over a Timex.

I'm young.

I'm healthy.

I'm happy, those are the things I've got to remember.

Take on me, take me on, which of course is the customary Norwegian goodbye.

Yes, this is their national anthem, I believe, isn't it?

So

18th for the USA actually seems higher than you would expect at the moment, given the absolute jeroboam of fury that is continually uncaked by American politics.

Well, what America has going for it is ignorance.

It allows you to ignore what's happening in the world because you don't know what's happening.

It allows you to just enjoy the moment because you don't remember what happened before and you don't care about what's happening later.

So that kind of keeps it going, right?

This kind of childlike on to the next.

So

ignorance is a bliss, but only like the 18th most blissful.

Also, I mean, I guess you do have to factor in the extent to which your country is making all other countries unhappy.

So that probably does keep America closer to the top than it would otherwise be just by dragging everyone else down.

So it's actually good tactics, the American foreign policy currently.

In France news now, a French baker

has been ordered to pay a 3,000 euro fine for working too hard after he refused to close his shop for a day a week last summer as he is well legally obliged to do

under

French law.

People in his local town were appalled.

He'd basically been fined for working too hard.

And I think the world needs more of this, Hari, because, I mean, you look at the people who've worked really hard in their lives.

Joseph Stalin put in the hours.

That did not end well for the world.

So we need to clamp down on

hard workers like that, slackers of the world unite.

Also, we have a robot revolution coming and we're going to need to take more than way more than just a single day off a week, even if we are a high-quality French Boulanger.

Latest reports, Harry, say that one in three jobs is vulnerable to the impending robot revolution.

Don't worry, we're the other two.

We are safe.

We are absolutely...

Absolutely safe.

But according to the latest predictions that I've got in this book here, if automation continues at its current rate the motorbike will have entirely replaced the donkey as a means of transport as soon as the year 1923 albeit that I haven't updated my paperwork for a while.

I mean I I I don't think this is good Andy I I I really don't I mean because it was a bakery like this is the most liberal fascism I've ever heard of.

He's being

punished for keeping a bakery open, the happiest place in the world?

A bakery.

Bakeries like hospitals and police stations must be kept open at all times in case of emergencies.

What if someone was smoking marijuana and wanted a French pastry?

Then what, Andy?

They'd be stuck.

I guess there's always hidden victims in these things.

Yeah.

Well, particularly in France as well, which is a nation that is, you know, essentially built on the baguette.

Surely, you'd expect there to be 24, 7.

3, 6, 5 bakeries in every single village.

I mean, absolutely, Andy.

I mean, if you were someone who based your view of other nations based on stereotypes you've seen in television and film, absolutely.

We in Britain never do that.

We've never done that.

We will never, ever do that.

Sports news now and in football news.

I mean, football has long since surpassed any challenge for the most ridiculous thing in the world, frankly, top-level professional real football, not your football, proper global football.

And this week, the owner of a Greek football team got cross with a referee making a dodgy decision and stormed onto the pitch with a gun, which arguably is taking football very slightly too seriously.

That's funny because the NRA said it was a very novel idea to bring guns into European soccer to arm players and test the goalies' courage and loyalty to the team.

It's good to see a positive angle on that.

The entire Greek league was suspended as a result, whilst Greek football just settled down to think about what the fk it's doing with itself.

That is all we have time for on this week's bugle.

Hari, thanks very much for joining us.

Do you have any tour shows to plug to people while you're here?

I do, Andy.

Well, first of all, my brother and I, my brother Ashoka and I have started a new podcast called the Kundabolu Brothers Podcast.

It airs every Thursday.

Not airs, I mean, you download it.

On, I really don't know how podcasting works.

Never listen to one.

But yeah, you can download it on Earwolf, iTunes, wherever you get your podcast, the Kundabolu Brothers Podcast.

And we'll be, it's a live podcast.

We'll be doing live shows this Sunday, March 18th at Littlefield in Brooklyn, and in Boston, two shows on Monday, March 19th at Improv Boston.

And then I'll be doing stand-up comedy in Los Angeles on April 7th at the Wilshire Ebel Theater, and as well as Lawrence, Kansas on April 2nd and Chapel Hill, North Carolina on April 3rd and 4th.

I'm particularly excited about that LA show.

So, yeah, all the information is available on hurrykundabolu.com or more realistically, Google.

And don't forget to come to my forthcoming Southern Hemisphere shows starting in Melbourne on the 10th of April.

All details on the internet.

There will be live bugles on the 15th of April, starring Alice Fraser and David O'Doherty, and the 22nd of April starring Tom Ballard and Aditi Meetal, the wonderful Indian comedian.

So, see you all there, Australia.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.

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.