Bugle 4047 – A fart wrapped in an illusion

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4047 of the world's longest running audio newspaper for a world whose obsession with the visual shows no signs of abating.

I'm Andy Zoltzman, live.

Hang on, let me just check that.

Oh, that's a solid 280 per minute pulse.

I get so excited when I do this show.

Live and in zero dimensions, count them losers, coming to you from the west coast of the USA.

Here in the city, named after a sense of bereavement and wobbly desserts, loss and jellies.

Loss and jellies.

Don't worry, that's the last one of the show.

And joining me, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, via a very long piece of string across the Pacific Ocean and a couple of yogurt pots from Sydney, Australia.

It's Alice Fraser.

Hello, Andy.

How are you?

I'm very well, thanks, Alice.

How are you?

I just got back from America, so we're sort of tag teaming around the world.

Yeah, we're basically hammering the environment.

I hope you've followed the elaborate clues that I've left to a prize at the end of it.

I don't know.

All right, well, that now sounds intriguing, but I only have another

12,000, Los Angeles.

I just want you to turn over every bin in the city.

Yes, a lot of people seem to have beaten me to that.

This is Bupal 4047, 4047, coincidentally, the age, based on current progress at which Theresa May

will be able to honestly use the sentence, yes, we've made some real progress with the talks.

And here in LA, the date is the 10th of Ding-Dong Doodle.

Sorry, they write the dates the other way around here.

It's the 20th of October.

Odd name for a month, that.

Lucky we cut it off at 12.

It is 214 years to the day since arguably the key moment in the rise of Donald Trump to power.

The Louisiana Purchase, when America slapped down a $15 million bill on Napoleon's French ass and walked off with two million square kilometers of Republican heartland.

So if you want someone to blame for Trump, blame Napoleon

rather than anyone else.

In Australia, it is the twenty-first of October

already, already in what is currently tomorrow.

And on the twenty-first of October nineteen eighty three, Alice, a significant milestone for humanity, the meter,

the celebrity distance, was defined at the 17th General Conference on Weights and Measures as specifically the distant that light travels in a vacuum in 1 299,792,458th of a second.

Wow.

So they finally nailed it down.

Up until then, the metre had been defined as the length of about five quite big carats, or a bit higher than a table, or about this much, or 5% of the horizontal attitude of a blue whale so uh finally good to uh get it absolutely pinned down 1947 on the the 21st of october 1947 the house un-american activities committee began its investigation into communist infiltration of the cinema uh of the film industry in the united states um

resulting in a blacklist that prevented many from working in the industry uh for years the un-american activities committee uh oddly failed to blacklist itself uh as perhaps perhaps one of the most un-American things ever invented.

But it was very bad news for two top Hollywood stars at the time, the cartoon characters Harry the Hammer and Susie Sickle.

Although, to be fair, there had been rumours about their communist sympathies ever since their 1937 hit movie, Peter the Poet, Goes to the Gulag.

This is the show for the week beginning Monday, the 23rd of October, 2017.

It's the 50th anniversary of this same day, 50 years ago, the day on which Herman J.

Trellikins, the fictitious American inventor, announced his intention to create a machine that could turn made-up people into real ones.

Sadly, Herman can't be with us today because it didn't work.

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

Well, a few sections this week, including this week in shapes, we look at rectangles, circles, non-equilateral triangles, and ask, is there a future for the rhombus?

Also in the bin, a free audio goat.

Please, buglers, for heaven's sake, use that wisely.

And with Christmas now just two months away, we have a special Christmas shopping advice section.

Save it all to the last minute.

We are just dust in the wind of history anyway.

Those sections all in the bin.

Top story.

In sexual harassment news, the recent allegations about Heby Weinstein have been exploding out into the world.

A new world for women in which we've suddenly realised that people are going to listen when you tell them about that sleazy dude.

He did that sleazy thing.

News stories have been emerging left, right, and centre, centre, including one about Carrie Fisher, who apparently sent a cow's tongue to a sleazy producer in Hollywood.

She personally delivered it in a Tiffany's box after hearing that he forced himself onto a friend.

I think that is absolutely the appropriate gift for a sleazy dude, being slimy, rough, and a toxic mixture of testosterone and socialisation, leading to an arrogant entitlement to the bodies of women.

No wait, that's men again.

Cows are a gentle creature whose only sin is being delicious and farting a lot.

That's two sins there, Alice.

Well it depends.

It depends if you consider being delicious a sin.

Oh, well.

Women in Hollywood and around the world are using the hashtag me too to share their experiences of sexual harassment.

In France women are using hashtag balance temp porque, which roughly translates to rat out your pig.

This hashtag went viral this week and encourages women to speak up in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

The French government has capitalised on this recently proposing a bill that seeks to crack down on sexual harassment which would include according to gender equality minister Ms.

Schiapa on the spot fines for quote when someone breaks into your vital space talks to you within 10 or 20 centimetres of your face follows you for three four four five or six streets or asks for your telephone number about 17 times

it's very specific and I think it's like something that happened to her it's got the specificity of this dude this morning.

I think on the spot fines for sleazy douchebags on public transport are an amazing idea.

France is going to be the richest government in the world in about five minutes.

If I had a dollar for every time some dude said something disgusting to me about my body and his jiz, I would be richer than Harvey Weinstein.

Also, if on-the-spot fines for sexual harassment were given directly to the women being harassed, you would fix the pay gap within a month.

It's interesting that she went for

following for three, four, five or six streets.

I mean, that's quite a specific range, that, isn't it?

Because you think, I mean, one or two might be coincidence.

Seven, I don't know, is that because that's now showing a level of romantic commitment that needs to be acknowledged?

Or I think at seven, you're married.

That's how it works.

I mean, you'd have thought three or four would start to get to the uh, you're obviously not going to get the telephone number phase of the conversation.

Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know, women aren't very good at maths, so this is the world we live in now.

I can make that joke, and you can't laugh at that joke.

Um, this, I mean, it is uh, it's been a hugely

depressing story and I guess an encouraging response to it.

It's a story that made Hollywood

manage to make itself look even less ethical than it already did, which is in its own way quite an impressive feat of moral gymnastics.

It's kind of bizarre, shameful, patriarchal omurta that does slightly make you think, Alice, that perhaps men ought now to be taking a break from their current two million year stint as the de facto gender in charge of planet Earth.

I think we've had maybe a fair crack of the whip and just need a little mental refresh, reassess our priorities and goals as a gender, chill out and then come back refresh for another two million years.

Just have a little bit of a sit and think about what you've done.

You know, just sit back, have a cup of tea, feel regret and shame, come back into society better men.

And on behalf of all women, I forgive you.

We fixed it.

Right, excellent.

I mean, do you think this marks a genuine turning point in global gender relations where the behavioural benchmark for the likes of Harvey Weinstein ceases to be what can I get away with?

And then maybe he starts,

you know, people like him start wearing special wristbands, you know, the old WWADHBD, which is what would any half-decent human being do?

Yeah, cat calling could be, uh, that's...

That could become a could become a crime, essentially.

Yeah, an on-the-spot fine.

This is a fantastic thing.

I just want a paywave thing.

You know, the thing where you tap your card on a, I just want to have that.

Every time some dude does something, just be like, ah, I'll have that $50, please.

Although it might provide a perverse incentive for women to walk around looking vulnerable.

Well, that is a joke I could not possibly have made, Alice.

You're welcome.

China news now and well, it's been a fun-packed hullabaloo at the Communist Party Congress in Beijing.

2,000 plus delegates coming together for the quinquennial celebration of Chinese communism for a frank and open exchange of view of of the one view that is allowed in China.

They had the as always at the Congress the Communist quiz night.

A load of multiple choice questions such as who will be leader of the Chinese Communist Party in five years' time?

Is it A, Xi Jinping?

Is it A Xi Jinping?

Is it A Xi Jinping?

Or is it A Xi Jinping?

Classic, classic Quiz Night.

Also, some dug out some of the old communist board games, including State Monopoly,

Whack the Poet, and ignore the human cost of an oppressively controlling government, which is a bit like backgammon, but different in every single way.

I mean, it's

sensational television for the neutral, the Chinese Communist Party Congress.

All action.

Fun for all the family.

The keynote speech by President Xi

was three and a half hours long,

which, I mean, I've been known to bang on for slightly too long at my gigs, but I've never managed a three and a half hours straight through.

But that is, when you think about it, Alice, that's one very good way to get a standing ovation.

To talk for so long that when you finish, people just have to get the blood back into their limbs by standing up and clapping.

I think it's an astonishing achievement.

The speech ran for 65 pages, and I believe it laid out the Chinese Prime Minister's vision for boring the rest of the world to death.

Three and a half hours is too many hours.

That is a bad date with a professor of finance who's decided to tell you about his childhood.

That is letting your drunk auntie tell you the whole story of her first divorce.

Like, this is way too long.

A range of reviews from the Chinese media range from it was very, very good to it was very, very good via it was very, very good.

He said some interesting things.

He said this, it is time for us to take centre stage in the world and to make a greater contribution to humankind.

Which contrasts with Donald Trump, who recently said, it is time for us to leave centre stage in the world and make a lesser contribution to humankind.

So two countries going in very much opposite global directions.

He also said no country can retreat to their own island.

Well, g, they can if you offer them the right referendum.

Let me tell you that from bitter national experience.

And he also said, we live in a shared world and face a shared destiny.

Well, I think we'll let Brexit be the judge of that.

A taste of the speech includes Xi Jinping declaring that the Chinese dream is a dream about history, the present, and the future, and then presumably going on to tell you all of those things with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old telling you about what happened in the park.

And then there was dinosaurs and then Confucianism, and then we got really good at making paper.

And then Marco Polo came along and stole noodles, though that's historically questionable.

Literally, the only thing he didn't mention was Donald Trump.

Yes, well, Trump.

I mean, Trump's been iced by quite a lot of people this week.

not just Xi Jinping, who pointedly didn't mention him,

but also Trump's two predecessors in the White House, George W.

Bush and Barack Obama, both made speeches

which did not mention Donald Trump whilst being 120% about Donald Trump.

They were described, I saw, as, quotes, veiled attacks on Trump's so-called presidency.

Veiled attacks, veiled in the same way that you veil veil your face by gluing a baby carrot to your nose.

I mean, it was...

It was pretty obvious who they were talking about without giving it the full

Donald Trump.

Well, they're dodging the Google alerts, right?

Although I imagine he's got Google alerts for like Donald Trump, dickhead, failure,

all of that stuff as well.

Well, he had a Google alert for the latest release of United Kingdom crime figures.

Apparently, this morning, he put out a tweet saying, just outreport at colon speech marks United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of radical Islamic terror close quote marks not good we must keep America safe well firstly congratulations mr.

Trump in a 140 character format you've managed to cram in about 5,000 different kinds of wrong

also that is the most inventive and inappropriate use of quotation marks I have ever seen because that is so far from what that report said.

I'm going to take issue with that, Andy.

The most inaccurate use of quote marks I've ever seen was a shop that said fish and chips but the chips was in quote marks.

But I'll give you that.

I think they were ironic chips.

Bearing in mind that I'm 43, I don't exercise enough.

And I'm not sure at this stage I'm going to be asked to hack it through the unending cogerdum to which medical advance will treat my generation.

But I probably don't have enough time

left in my life in the however many up to 50-ish years on this planet I've got left to properly explain everything that is wrong with what Trump puts in that tweet.

But I guess having spent a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, breaking down the actual crime figures themselves, factoring in changes in the way crime is recorded in Britain, trends within the subsets of crime, social factors, and the almost total absence of any reference to terrorism in the report, not to mention the statistically minuscule influence of terrorism in the crime statistics.

It's hard to imagine not then spending at least 40 years shouting at my computer screen, interspersed with vomiting into any available bucket at what this man is doing to the concepts of truth, dignity and democracy.

Also, it does raise the question quite how he imagines that, for example, a significant and tragic rise in gang-related knife crime in Britain threatens the safety of America, and also how the spread of radical Islamic terror is influencing low-level crime in Britain.

Are people thinking, oh no, the caliphate's coming?

I better go and steal some sausages from a supermarket to tide us over.

Maybe this is his logic.

Also, the causal link is quite obviously bullshit.

I mean, he might as well have said, smartphones improve amid the rise of Islamic terror.

Excellent, ISIS loves iPhones.

Or US stock markets up again, which he seems to bang on about a lot, amid the spread of Islamic terror.

Very good, we must keep ISIS strong.

Please, Mr.

Trump, keep your nonsense on your side of the Atlantic.

In Moon News Now, a 500-kilometer lunar cave raises hopes for the human colonization of the moon.

This week, scientists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency confirmed the presence of a cave on the moon after examining the hole using radio waves.

I don't really understand the science of it, but I think it's high-tech language for the traditional way that humans have always discovered caves, which is standing in the mouth of the cave going, Hello!

Hello!

The chasm is 50 kilometres long and 100 meters wide.

It appears to be structurally sound, and its rocks may contain ice or water deposits that, quote, could be turned into fuel.

Because the thing about humans discovering things is that we always want to turn them into fuel.

Oh, what a beautiful butterfly.

I wonder if I can render it down to run a belching smokestack.

What will the smokestack do?

No, it's just a smokestack.

The data was sent back by the orbiter, which is nicknamed Kaguya after the moon princess in a Japanese fairy tale, which is adorable and in light of the previous information leads me to think the Japanese space team is made up equally of ruthless capitalists and adorable six-year-old girls, which to be honest would make sense of some of the aesthetic and cultural choices made by Japan in the last half century.

So yeah, this cave, which, I mean, the initial report said 500km, and then it was scaled back to 50 kilometres, I think, possibly due to a misprint rather than the scientists getting overexcited.

But it does make you think, there's, you know, one-sixth gravity on the moon, one sixth of our earth gravity.

Do you really want to live in a cave?

You're not just going to spend your entire time smashing your head on the ceiling.

On the other hand, Andy, you could become the sportsman you've always secretly been on the inside.

With lesser gravity, you could leap higher, move faster, be stronger, and your hair would stand directly up.

I mean, I hadn't really thought of it from that perspective.

I do have

a magazine from

the 1930s,

which I bought on eBay because that's the kind of guy I am.

It's called World of Wonder, and it was like a kids' magazine,

Science for Children.

And it does have a page which is entitled, If a Test Match Were Played on the Moon.

And it has this glorious illustration of people playing cricket on the moon.

And bear in mind, this is a long time before people actually went to the moon.

I mean, it does have someone bowling a massive no-ball to start with, but it has an explanation of why cricket would be quite difficult on the moon.

I'll just read some of it for you now I'm glad you brought this up because I sat and have this on my on my computer what have you done Alice this imaginative picture shows us in vivid fashion how very different are the conditions on the moon from what they are on earth when that's they knew that even in the 1930s Of course the absence of atmosphere I mean a lot of people say cricket has that at the best of times and the tremendous variations of heat and cold would make it impossible for a human being to live on the moon don't be so negative 1930s but assuming these conditions could be overcome and and, you know, a 50-kilometre underground cave.

I mean,

that offers what a glorious prospect of human colonisation.

Living in a 50-kilometre cave.

Shall we nip out, darling?

No, it's 100 degrees centigrade outside because it's daytime.

We will literally boil.

Or maybe this evening when the sun's gone in.

No, that'll be a minus 150.

Let's put our overcoats on.

That should do it.

Anyway, so we're returning to this.

Assuming these conditions could be overcome, the 1930s article on Cricket on the Moon continues.

We should find life on our satellite very strange indeed, the pull of gravitation being so much less.

Everyone could jump six times as high and run six times as fast and hit six times as hard as on the Earth.

This article is foreseeing the invention of 2020 cricket, basically.

This is...

This is, I mean, to be honest, if Indian businessmen read this article now, I mean, they would be a moon cricket league by the end of this year.

The absence of air would mean that a ball bowled or struck by a bat would go on without resistance for an enormous distance.

A good blow would send the cricket ball hurtling over the mountains.

I mean everyone is tuning in for this.

Everyone.

I mean the thick what you could get for sponsoring the six isn't that sorry if this is a bit niche for some of you buglers.

And in most matches if not all every ball would be a lost ball.

I mean that might cause certain logistical issues.

It would be practically impossible to catch balls travelling with such speed.

Even in the daytime the sky would be quite dark for the sun's rays would reach the moon direct without being broken up by nitrogen crystals as in our atmosphere.

So there you go.

That is all science from the 1930s about cricket on the moon.

It's a great insight into the historical approach of the British, which is: can we play cricket on it?

Exactly.

That's what took us around the world so successfully.

Just one other quick Trump story, and it's to do with art.

Not always two natural bedfellows, Donald Trump and fine art,

But in his Trump Tower,

there is a Renoir picture

called Two Sisters on the Terrace by the French Impressionism celebrity artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The only problem is that that painting certifiably resides in a gallery in Chicago.

And

so what Trump has is a

forgery or a fake.

He has said, no it's not.

So fake art is now muscling in on fake news.

The exciting thing though, this puts me on a personal level with Donald Trump because I have a fake Cézanne,

a pretty good rendition of the card players that I picked up in a charity shop in Streatham for £10.

So this is the closest I've ever felt to feeling like Donald Trump.

I feel we can bond over our possession of fake masterpieces.

I mean, the question is though, Alice, does it matter that his picture is a fake, that his Renoir is a fake?

I mean, the thing is, they look very, very alike, and I'm sure Trump has it on his wall because he absolutely loves the picture, admires the brushwork and the artistic skill, and sees the Impressionist movement as an example of radical modernity that he wants to see the U.S.

economy replicate in its proud march into a more optimistic high-tech future.

I'm sure it's not because it was fing expensive and a bit showy.

It ties in really nicely with the rest of his persona.

I think it's a showpiece of his individual attitude to truth.

It ties in really nicely with the fake charity donations claiming to have called the families of soldiers and also his constant claim to be an actual human being.

The man is a fart wrapped in an illusion.

He is just.

I think he's been sent back from the future by a 3D rendering system.

He's not a real.

He's not real.

I think if you poked him, your finger would probably go right in.

I mean, I think also, I mean, on the plus side, no, no, I mean, some people have sent messages asking us to just leave off this topic for a bit, but it's quite hard, really.

He has proved the non-existence of God

because

he does refer to God a hell of a lot.

And I think if God did exist, he would have hauled himself out from behind the cloud and said, for f ⁇ 's sake, Donald, have you even read my book?

Donald Trump never reads books.

That's it.

He hasn't even read his own books.

In Australian news now, the rollout of the national disability insurance scheme has been plagued by issues and may need to be plugged by migrants.

The Commission said it might not be possible in the short term to train enough allied health professionals.

Look, as an Australian, I'm outraged at the slow implementation of the scheme, which is a major reform of disability services designed to provide the right support according to each person's needs and goals in a holistic way across their whole life.

The government is bullshit and lame and failing us as Australians.

On the other hand, as an Australian who was recently in the US, US, I find it incredibly difficult to complain about a slight inefficiency in a massive rollout of $22 billion a year of comprehensive government services to an underprivileged group.

I mean, of course, yes, it's very annoying.

It's a failure of our piss week, arrogant government, but also I saw people in America whose kidney dialysis was about to run out.

Do you know what happens when your kidney dialysis runs out, Andy?

I don't.

I'm Australian.

It makes me feel like

Paris Hilton complaining that my coffee's three degrees too warm.

Buy another coffee, Paris.

I think it's going to work out fine.

Bugle feature section now and wildlife.

Well, it looks like wildlife is for now here to stay.

Still a lot of species knocking around the world.

Too many for me.

50 should be plenty.

Alice, you are the Bugle's wildlife correspondent.

You make flamingos turn into pelicans with fear just by looking at them.

A veritable one-woman war against pink, long-legged wading birds.

Do you also just out of curiosity?

Do you have a problem with flamenco dancing as well?

No, no, it's slightly too frilly for my personal taste, but I have no long-held vendetta.

Because

I know the dictionary says there is no actual etymological link between flamenco and flamingo, but to me, the origin of flamenco dancing was a guy in a flamingo outfit trying to keep a wasp away from his groin.

Well, Andy, that's made me feel less positively disposed towards flamenco dancers, but otherwise.

So, some wonderful news in the world of wildlife this year, particularly from Jonathan Jonathan the Tortoise on St.

Helena, who currently I believe is the world's oldest tortoise at a solid 186 years old.

And he's had a companion named Frederica for the last 25 years or so.

But a recent trip to the tortoiseologist for Frederica revealed that she was not in fact a lady tortoise.

But may

instead have been a gentleman tortoise.

And St.

Helena is yet to legalize gay marriage.

And now its most famous resident appears to have been embroiled in a two-and-a-half decade-long homosexual relationship.

I think the whole thing is a massive scandal, not the weirdness of finding a male-order bride for 160-year-old tortoise, as he was then,

or even the fact that the tortoise has turned out to be gay.

But I think Jonathan has failed to fulfil his potential as a St.

Helena resident, never having wracked the European continent with war, suppressed a royalist insurgency, or forced the defeated nations of the Fourth Coalition to sign the treaties of Tilsit in July 1807, bringing an uneasy peace to the continent.

Someone's been busy on the internet.

I've been back on Wikipedia.

They've locked down my page, Andy.

Too many

bugle alterations to my Wikipedia page.

Although, for a time there, I was an expert on the impact of velociraptors on the American political system.

Well, unfortunately, Jonathan, in his

advanced age, and I mean, it is to be fair according to experts it's very difficult to judge the sex of a tortoise partly because of the very tight-fitting outfits that they wear.

I'm not judging them.

That's

a fact.

But Jonathan is very old.

He's blind and he's lost his sense of smell.

But the good news is he can still hear and I'm delighted to say we've got Jonathan the tortoise on the line from Sent Helena now.

So Jonathan, thanks very much for coming on on the show.

Hello, Andy.

Big fan of the show.

Jonathan, can you tell us about your relationship with

Frederick?

Butt out, Andy.

None of your f ⁇ ing business.

Sorry, but I just want to know whether it's because there's been a lot of speculation in the press, whether it's

it more than

just a platonic friendship?

Stop prying, Andy.

Can't a tortoise have a gender-fluid best buddy these days without everyone assuming that they're doing it?

Sorry, Jonathan.

It's just that.

It's just you humans are fing obsessed with it.

Besides, I'm 186.

I'm fing blind.

I can't fing smell.

I have no idea if I even have a fing penis, to be honest.

And I'm too old to have kids, so just let me live my own fing life.

Sorry, I've clearly caught you on a bit of a bad day.

So

there's nothing going on with young Frederick.

No, but he does sound hot, as tortoises go.

But there's a bit of an age gap.

He's 160 years younger than me.

I don't think his parents would approve.

Besides, he's a millennial and I'm a mid-19th century immunal.

I can't see it working.

Uh okay, and and have you had tortoise girlfriends in the past?

Sure, Andy.

There was that one back in 1890.

Shelley, I think she was called.

Although that's what I call all tortoises, to be fair.

Just one more quick question, Jonathan.

As someone who's lived through the entire history of Test match cricket, which of course began in 1877 when we were a 40-something whippersnapper.

Any thoughts on the forthcoming Ashes series between England and Australia?

Well, it should be a great series, Andy, and I am very much looking forward to your take on it in your forthcoming ABC Ashes podcast, The Unbelievable Ashes.

I'm sure that will be a hoot.

Thanks, thanks, Jonathan and

there, and you will be able to hear that podcast from mid-November onwards.

Produced by ex-bugleman Tom Wright.

Crap guy.

So lovely to talk to her.

That's our first tortoise that we've had on the show, I think.

Beautiful.

You, Chris.

In other

World Life news, it turns out scientists have found evidence that fish suffer from human-style stress.

This to me, Alice, is no surprise.

I mean, of course they're fing stressed.

Half the time they're worried about being eaten, and the other half of the time they're trying to remember what they are.

And the other half of the time they're worrying about property prices.

Sea levels are rising.

That means there's more sea on the market, values go down, and a lot of fish have planned for their retirement based on prices continuing to go up.

I know that was unrealistic, but that's a fact.

The long-term future looks pretty bleak if you're a fish these days.

I think so too.

You have to also remember that they've got a very difficult lifestyle.

They spend most of their time in school.

The scale of the problem is...

I'm not going to.

I'm not going to, Andy.

But it is interesting.

I think I would be stressed if I were a fish too.

You're a weird exception to many vegetarian meal plans and you're under constant threat of being eaten by almost everything including bigger fish, people, predatory birds, or worse, a flamingo.

But of course, the flip side of this, often with psychiatric issues such as stress and anxiety, does come enhanced creativity.

And recently published this fish poem by a herring from the Mid-Atlantic named Lionel Herring.

Shark.

I don't like shark.

If I could bark, I'd bark at shark.

He ate my gran, then away he swam, the toothy shitbag of the seas.

In photography news, the Australian Geographic Photography Awards have just come out, so we are including a photography section.

This is a series of photographs which I will describe to you, given that this is an audio medium.

The first one is a picture of some seaweed.

The second one is a picture of a porcupine on a hill looking over a vast vista of mountains lit by a gentle dawn.

The third one is some fish dying in a net.

The fourth one is some

turtles eating a jellyfish aggressively.

The fifth one is a picture of some sort of fluffy bird looking windswept and ruffled and somewhat grumpy.

The other one is a picture of an oil slick.

Then there's some ice.

Then there's a dolphin.

Then there's a bat, a swimming bat, splashing on some water, and that's it.

Right.

It's the wonder of nature.

The glorious, overwhelming wonder of nature.

I feel that has gone into your soul, Andy.

Your emails now, this comes in from Dave Burchock

on the proper pronunciation of Maryland.

And he says it's not Maryland.

It's more like Maryland.

The official phonetic spelling is Maryland.

Well, anyway,

it's

I mean, it's up to me as a British person how I pronounce American states, I believe, isn't it?

Yeah, how you pronounce things dictates how everyone else should pronounce them, right?

Yeah,

that's the rules of Britishness.

There's a very famous story about Manuka, which is a city which was until the Queen visited called Manuka.

And she came and said, oh, what a wonderful place this is, this Manuka, and everyone had to change their name.

If you want to see me mispronouncing names of American places, why not come to one of my remaining

U.S.

tour gigs?

And of course, this is famously international buy a ticket to one of Andy Zaltzmann's U.S.

Bracketts and Toronto Tour Shows Week, proudly supported by the Bugle podcast.

The forthcoming shows: Toronto on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, the 24th and 25th, then Chicago on the 30th, New York on the 31st, Boston on the 1st of November, then Philadelphia on the 5th, Nashville on the 7th, and rounding up in Washington DC on the 8th of November.

Do come to all of those shows, particularly in Nashville.

Really, particularly in Nashville.

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

Alice,

do you have any shows that you'd like to alert bugle listeners to?

I'll be doing the live bugle on the 16th of November.

I'll be in London from the 4th of November doing gigs.

Look my stuff up on alicefraser.com or at alliterative, which is my Twitter account.

If anyone is really good at sound editing, I've been getting a lot of complaints about my podcast that it's too quiet.

So, if anyone wants to help me with that,

turn it up to 11.

Well, yeah, no, I would, Chris, but also you.

So, all the details to my US tour shows at andyzoltzman.co.uk.

Yes, the live bugle show on the 16th of November.

Do come to that.

That will be Alice, Nish,

and myself.

Unfortunately, due to new government regulations, people with the following names have not been allowed to listen to this week's Bugle.

Derek,

Giuliana, Pablo, and Maureen.

So I'm sorry if you do have one of those names, you have to forget what you've just listened to.

Sorry, I don't make up the rules.

So hang on, no, I did just make up that rule.

I'm part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Anyway, please show your support also for the Radiotopia Network fundraiser over the next few weeks.

More details coming up shortly.

Your support is hugely appreciated by everyone here at the Bugle and all my fellow Radiotopiaists.

There is no full bugle next week, but we will put a show out for you.

Then I'll be back on the 3rd of November.

In the meantime, see you all my gigs in North America.

From me in Los Angeles and Alice in Sydney.

Goodbye.

Bye.

Thanks as ever to the Knight Foundation, easily the Bugle podcast's favourite foundation.

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.