Bugle 4046 – Retronauts and prairie skirts

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Youblers and welcome to issue 4046 of the Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

I have some words, you have some ears.

There is now nothing to stop this thing happening.

This is for the week beginning Monday the 16th of October 2017.

Although we are recording on Wednesday the 11th of October, so by Monday up to 85% of today's show could have had transmuted from lie to fact and or vice versa.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann and what I say goes

nowhere.

And I'm here in London, the city where as we speak Britain is collectively gearing itself up for a long slow run-up and jump over the Brexit brick wall of democratic obligation into the shattered bottleneck half-eaten kebab-filled wheelie bin of freedom.

Great time to be alive.

Joining me this week, two people from very, very different sides of the Atlantic and with equally different degrees of blood relation to me.

Firstly, from the world-leading Zaltzmann gene pool.

It's the fountain of all wisdom, Helen Zaltzmann.

Hi, Andy.

Hello, Helen.

Hello, buglers.

You've got a cough.

I do have a cough.

Maybe I'll treat you to a bit of that later.

Right, I look forward to that.

Yeah, you know, everyone enjoys hearing someone cough in a guttural way.

What could be finer?

I mean, in fact, one of the last bugles I recorded with John Oliver before the creators, he had a horrific cough.

Do you remember that?

I I don't think they ever put it out in the end.

Yeah, we got 10 minutes in and binned it off.

Yeah.

Somewhere.

Wow, somewhere.

That was his way of telling you that it was over.

Are you calling it a hiatus or a coup or a rebirth?

We will let history be the judge of that.

I think a Renaissance.

Yeah.

That was the Renaissance.

Right.

And then, or this is the Renaissance.

That was the Renaissance.

This is just a cough.

Well, we don't know yet.

We don't know if this cough is spelling the end of Bugle 2.0.

That does sound like a title of a really obscure obscure country in Western Song.

That was the Renaissance.

Anyway, you've already heard him.

The man who was there at the very

birth of the Renaissance.

The Naissance of the Renaissance.

The first episode, almost exactly one year ago, it's taking a well-earned break from being on the same continent as its president here in Europe, escaping temporarily.

It's Hari Kondobolu.

Is this still Europe?

Oh, well, it is for at least another two years.

Oh, right.

Nice to be in Europe.

And then we'll have our own continent.

They're digging some kind of great continental crack across the channel.

There is a very brief period of time where I thought this country was so stupid and was so beneath the United States.

And then the election happened and we were worse.

Congratulations.

There was that small period, though, with Brexit.

That small little window.

That felt good.

We topped you once again.

So welcome.

Welcome, Hari.

This recording was delayed by, well, about 40 minutes due to a slight issue with there being two Brunswick places in in London.

Yes, there's two Brunswick places and apparently N1 and NW1 different.

Do you think that W means nothing?

Why would we not edit it out if it meant nothing?

Well, that's strange they use W as a placeholder in this country.

So, Bugless, if you have not enjoyed the first 45 minutes of this show, which were just silence as we waited for

with a bit of coughing.

Maybe edit that bit out.

But anyway, it's great.

Great to have you.

Great to have you here.

What brings you to London?

Well, I was opening for Chris Rock in Europe.

Oh, right.

Yes,

for eight shows.

Audiences up to

10,000, 15,000.

So a bit smaller than the regular Huricon the Bolu solo gigs.

Well, it's funny you say that because now I'm playing basement in Soho

for 150 people, and I'm happy for the work, and I'm happy for their money, or whatever percentage I get.

But yeah, it's a little strange after playing like 10,000 in Amsterdam to play one of those.

I expect more

people.

Just more people.

More people.

Just where we go.

You thought this studio would have a couple of thousand people in.

I'm like, wait, this is...

I thought there was always an audience here who somehow kept very quiet throughout the whole show.

Maybe that's why you assumed you were going to the far more glamorous project

in NW.

It was pretty glamorous.

So we are recording on Wednesday the 11th of October,

which means it is 50 years to the day since the 11th of October, 1967, a day which sadly brought the death of Stanley Morrison at the age of 78, the famous British British typographer who designed numerous fonts, including the classic Times New Roman.

One of the but one of the most what you're not a fan of the Times New Roman, but um he was also involved in uh other classics such as Gil Sands.

Oh, I can get behind that.

Yep, um is that nothing to do with Eric Gill?

It is, he designed it.

Well, that's a problem, isn't it?

Yeah, that is a problem given the frankly horrific things he did in his life.

Eric Gill, the uh

scene of fonts, um the um uh perpetua uh as well as uh snout trap, omega Floppy, Gloopaduck Scroll, Potato Visigothic, Nudinora Wobble Scripts, Spitzenklaufstrauten Very Bold, Zingledingle, Zongl Dongle, and Vlark, all fonts that Morrison personally or personally designed or oversaw the design of,

such as Gild Sands.

And to commemorate him popping his elegantly serifed clogs, we are launching three new Bugle-only audio fonts.

And we'll each be using a different font in our words on this show.

Helen, you'll be using Bugle Semi-Bold.

Could we have an example of that, please?

Does it have serifs or no serifs?

No serifs.

Great, I'm happy with that.

Okay, well, you just heard it.

Hari will be using Satiricept Pointik.

Let's have a quick blast of that.

That's an italicised one.

That is really a font just to use for occasional impact.

And I'll be using Hogwash Condensed.

Another anniversary on the 16th of October 1957, Antonio Vilas-Boas, a Brazilian farmer, became the first man to have claimed to have been abducted by aliens.

The first high-profile alien abduction case, he claimed he'd been abducted from his tractor by four barking aliens in grey overalls before being stripped, smeared all over with gel, made to vomit by a noxious ghast, and then sexually enthralled by a lady alien with a bright red gimbal crutch before being released and becoming a lawyer.

Smacked up.

It's a regular night out in Tumbridge, wasn't we?

I mean, people aren't given that option for their law degrees anymore.

It's like you have to go to school as opposed to all that.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if becoming a lawyer was, you know, part of the abduction story, but it's part of his life story.

But then when you become a lawyer, you are often hazed covered in gel.

But I mean, I guess if you've been abducted and seduced by aliens, you probably get back to Earth and think, well, I'm going to devote myself to the law.

That's the obvious thing to do, isn't it?

I wonder if the aliens used to wear overalls because the only American television they'd seen was the Beverly Hillbillies, the old U.S.

show about hillbillies that moved to Beverly Hills.

They wore overalls.

So perhaps they thought, okay, let's disguise ourselves as people by wearing these overalls and no one would know.

Do we have any evidence that the Beverly Hillbillies was transmitted into outer space?

Do we have any evidence that there were aliens and they exist in outer space?

Well,

this debate could go on for years.

Where was he abducted from?

Brazil.

Brazil.

Yeah.

Just a very big contrast.

I was just wondering whether there was a specific...

What a specific farm?

Well, I was just wondering whether there was a region.

Right.

For the farmy bit, where they grow all the farm stuff.

I was just wondering if there's been any repeat claims about it.

I don't know.

What year was it again?

57.

57.

Are you sure he wasn't a Nazi?

He could have.

I think he was quite a young farmer at the time.

Are you sure it wasn't like a Nazi fleeing and he's trying to override the oh, that's a Nazi story with the no, I was he's the abducted by aliens guy.

Right.

That totally makes you forget about the Nazi bits.

But we can't we can't rule it out.

Yeah.

Um 17th of October next year.

We'll be 30 years to the day since I was bar Mitzford.

I remember that.

Congratulations.

That was the penultimate time I ever went to a synagogue.

Good out of the loop.

But if you were.

Do you have to get it updated every 30 years?

Not the Bar Mitzvah bit.

The circumcision bit, I do.

Anyway, but if you were one of those people unfortunate enough not to have been at my bar mitzvah and given me a present, why not make up for it now by acknowledging my status as an adult male in the Jewish community, by buying a ticket to one of my forthcoming U.S.

tours.

Beginning this Sunday at Cobbs in San Francisco.

Then Tuesday at the House of Comedy in Phoenix, Arizona.

Thursday and Friday at Nerd Melton, LA.

And Saturday at the Aladdin in Portland, Oregon.

Then we have Toronto the following week, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Nashville, and Washington, D.C.

All details on the internet.

Bar Mitsubishi was like your first gig, wasn't it?

Pretty good crowd.

Pretty good crowd.

It's weird to split them by gender, I thought.

It's odd that you're still doing that with your gigs.

Well, rules are rules, Helen.

Rules are rules.

Yes.

It was a...

Yeah, it was quite weird.

I had to read a bit of Isaiah, chapter 42.

Is that one of the ones with all the puns in it?

I can't remember the puns because I never knew what it meant.

I just knew how to say the Hebrew bits.

But I don't think I'd ever actually read the translation.

I think what it says is that you hereby declare you will donate all of your organs to an illegal organ farm.

Oh, right.

Effective immediately.

As always, the second viewer is going straight in the bin.

This week, look at cryptocurrencies.

We look at all the top cryptocurrencies, from Bitcoin and Ethereum and Zcash to pseudo-wedge, Clinky Wodgers, Percy the Magic Purse, and Bully's Bullshit Bullions.

That's a new bogus currency launched by the former Wolverhampton Wanderers and England center forward, Steve Bull.

Oh, God.

We have also, we review pigs and axes.

That's just a return to basic bartering.

And V-Dolls, which are verbal dollars.

We just have to tell someone that you've paid them, say, 10 verbal dollars, and they could then spend those verbal dollars somewhere else, slightly over-reliance on trust, but then not so far removed from, for example, the entire global economy and the concept of money.

And we ask for you, which cryptocurrency presents the best pretend universe for you to hurl your actual money into?

It's all witchcraft, people.

This world is doomed.

Also in the bin, look at a new podcast.

Uncommitted, the all-new false crime podcast about the crimes that could have, maybe even should have happened, but never did.

Nobody was ever found.

No one went missing.

Things ostensibly and actually stayed the same as they were.

But why?

Uncommitted delves deep into the stories and people who were not affected by being the perpetrators or victims of these terrible things that did not take place.

That show is already bigger than this show.

Episode one looks at the superficially and actually happy marriage of Bertrand and Edna Scratch, the Milwaukee couple who never murdered each other, to reveal how a once idyllic relationship failed to deteriorate to the extent that murder was not only not the only option, but was never even close to being considered.

They had the odd disagreement about sandwich fittings, but other than that, everything seemed to be fine on the surface.

And underneath the surface.

Or was it?

Yes.

Next week, the priceless necklace that never moved moved from the jewelry box.

So do tune in for that, that section in the bin.

Top story this week, and humanity versus coal, the great war of our times, is over.

The head of the American Environmental Protection Agency

has declared that the war on coal is over.

Scott Pruitt

said so in the coal mining states of Kentucky and at last we can breathe more difficultly again

as the holy God-given right to pollute the living out of this planet has been preserved by the Trump administration for future generations.

Ori, as an American who likes to breathe

the most unhealthy air possible, you must be delighted by this.

Well I find it amazing Andy Scott Proof he rejects the consensus of scientists that emissions from burning fossil fuels are the main cause of global warming but he's consistent.

I want to say that he's consistent because he then claimed gravity was only a theory and had to be restrained by several colleagues after he attempted to prove it by throwing himself from a roof.

He's dedicated.

Fair play to the lad.

It is kind of odd because he is a notorious

climate sceptic, which, I mean, in this day and age is basically like being an egg skeptic.

I've never seen one.

Well, exactly.

Well, you claim something just drops out of a chicken in a shell and you can cook it and eat it.

Pull the other one, loser.

They all scoffed at Galileo, Andy.

They did.

Great restaurant.

Thank you very much.

He's, I mean, it is.

Putting Scott Pruitt in charge of the environment, Hurry, seems to me like putting the Thrash Metal Group Anthrax in charge of a neighbourhood noise abatement scheme or getting Hieronymus Bosch to illustrate a manual about how to run a jam stall at a church fair.

It is not ideal and fraught with risk.

Do you think he's just like people who are nostalgic for when cassettes were big and they claimed that cassettes were better than not cassettes?

He's just a format retronaut.

He's just nostalgic for a different fuel.

A format retronaut.

Yeah.

That's a lovely phrase.

He's like, no, sod vinyl, I'm going to go coal.

That's what all the

hip world destroyers will be into.

I like the cassette example because it's

just like coal, not the best quality.

Exactly.

Not really the g it it ends up getting thrown away in big bundles and it's

there's no value to it.

No, and uh he's ignoring the fact that there's a lot more money in modern technologies such as renewable energy or MP3s.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it is kind of odd, isn't it?

It was basically repealing the Clean Power Plan, which was a big plank of Obama's legacy.

And, of course, I guess, you know, the last thing America wants is to be a global leader in unquestionably one of the biggest industries of the future.

I mean, that is what people voted Trump to do was to avoid them maintaining any position as some kind of global figurehead.

Yes.

And also,

I feel like I'm taking whatever you're saying and just ignoring it and then telling a joke.

Oh, right.

I'm used to that.

Okay.

Exactly.

Enlarge largely how my life works.

It's largely what you do.

Zing!

Oh, that's been building up for 37 years, Helen.

I mean, it's completely impractical because coal becomes less useful as the climate gets hotter because there is less of a need for creating heat artificially and because we'll all be dead.

Well, I mean, it's good to have something to look forward to, isn't it?

I mean, it's so shiny and sparkly.

Essentially, this is America basically resigning from the 21st century.

That is correct.

As a nation, right.

And even China has got behind renewables and given up on coal.

Yeah, but that's largely because it was choking all all of its people to death.

Maybe that's the future America wants.

Yeah.

Maybe it wants everybody to have a cough like I've got.

All right, so

you are

a poster girl for the Trump administration's environmental.

I've got a little coal fire burning in my throat at all times.

Keep in mind there is going to be growth in the emphysema industry.

Nobody thinks about the emphysema industry.

Well, exactly.

There's a lot of things that will benefit from this.

You know, businesses that clean up after environmental disasters.

Yeah.

I mean, that is a growth industry.

Yeah.

It'll save on pensions because more and more Americans will be splushing themselves to death at an early age.

That's correct.

It's nice that he wants to create more jobs again in Kentucky.

Jobs that are really unpleasant because you're underground in a coal mine most of the time and usually lead to a premature death.

What do you mean, Helen?

The coal industry, notoriously, through its history, has treated its workers like precious jewels, overpaid them wildly, and given them only the very best, most comfortable working conditions.

I will not have a word said against my beloved coal industry.

Besides, which would you rather die of?

Respiratory illness soon or full-blown dementia later on?

Text us your views.

At what point does paleontology become coal mining?

I don't know.

I guess it's when you put it in

some kind of burner rather than a museum exhibit.

Right.

So everyone's pro-fossils but fussy about fossil fuels.

Yeah, it's hypocrisy of the worst kind.

I don't understand how the coal industry has been able to

push their pro-coal agenda when we've been taught from a young age that coal is bad.

Santa Claus gives naughty kids coal.

Right there, we're programmed in thinking it's bad.

Santa Claus isn't giving naughty kids solar panels.

That's a good point.

But he's only giving them one lump of coal, so it's not even enough to fuel anything.

No.

So really, he's giving them a symbol of coal.

It's like making them wistful because they haven't even got enough of a shit thing.

Right.

But it's enough to be like, this is the symbol of bad things.

It is coal.

There's nothing you can do with this coal.

It is evil and wrong.

Yeah, do you remember when Nazism used to be considered a bad thing?

And that's had a remarkable turnaround recently.

That's, you know, with fashion, everything comes back around.

Exactly.

Like prairie skirts and the swastika.

It's a prairie skirt.

It's just very flouncy, Andy.

Right.

Every three years they come back.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Okay.

Just hang on to the one you've got.

Thank you.

I will do.

I'm all about the prairie skirts.

When it comes to the Trump administration's attitude

towards climate change science,

I mean, I guess there's, you know, there's an element of wishful thinking involved.

And I guess, as the old saying goes, if you believe in something strongly enough, you can make it happen.

Do you know who said that?

Marilyn Manson in a 1997 interview about the album Antichrist Superstar, which coincidentally is Donald Trump's current Facebook status.

In other environmental news, walruses are set to die due to

Donald Trump.

I know we have been accused on the show of taking an anti-Trump agenda,

but according to this article,

the Trump administration has refused to list the Pacific walrus as endangered after deciding that a big, tusky, whisker-faced, lard-bellied, ice-bothering, fish-guzzling bastard may be able to adapt to the loss of sea ice that they currently depend on.

Well, you know, like

dinosaurs adapted to being hit by asteroids.

Yeah, they were very good at it, actually.

We've still got crocodiles, aren't we?

Yeah,

the African black rhino adapted to being hunted to extinction.

Yeah.

They can do it if they put their minds to it.

If Kevin Costner can make it in Water World, Willie the Walrus can make it in in reality.

If a shockingly unqualified man can be President of the United States, walruses can put the work in and survive without their habitats.

And look how well foxes have evolved into living on the streets of London.

Yeah.

So you're basically saying that what we want is feral walruses in London.

That's considered.

Going from bin to bin.

Yeah, eating chicken carcasses.

Right.

Living it up.

I mean, I think I'd prefer that to the fox, to be honest.

Have you ever had your bins rifled through by a walrus?

Harry?

That's a euphemism.

Then yes.

It's, I mean, the background story, but, you know, because Trump is doing this because he takes revenge on all his enemies.

And as we remember, in 1987, this famously happened in Florida at a SeaWorld.

A walrus splashed Mr.

Trump,

destroying his hair.

His hair looked great, actually, the best it's ever looked, but they said it had destroyed his hair, waited 30 years, finally found his revenge.

God, there's so many little bitter vendettas, aren't they?

They're so cold.

But not as cold as it would have been 30 years ago.

What I don't understand is that the Obama administration actually could have put these walruses on the endangered species list, but they said that there were other animals that were a bigger priority.

Right.

So is the endangered species list, is it limited?

Is there only a limited number of people that can be added?

Limited number of people, limited number of animals that could be added at any particular time.

We only have it in our power to give a shit about a limited number of animals at a time.

At a time.

Also, walruses eat seals and can kill polar bears.

So maybe they prioritise those first because walruses don't have the predator of other walruses.

Actually, they do because they can trample each other to death.

So, yeah, it was a bad decision.

How much research did you do into that?

Did you make walruses trample each other in your room upstairs in my house?

Just wanted to see.

I think it was.

They found it really difficult to get up the stairs.

The thing is, I mean, people criticise Trump for

hypocrisy or not really meaning what he says, but I think...

He would quite happily slay a walrus with a chainsaw in one of his weekly YouTube postings just to make a point.

I I mean, what point?

It doesn't really matter.

As long as a point is being made by him and there is a dead walrus on the floor at the end of it.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, which I know is your favorite branch of American government,

said that walruses are unlikely to be considered endangered in the foreseeable future, which apparently is defined as from now until the year 2060.

Now, to me, that is a wildly optimistic end date for the foreseeable future, 43 years ago, because 43 years ago, 43 years away because what in the time between me beginning to read this sentence and me reaching the bit where I say wasp-infested pumpkin for the second time Donald Trump may well have stuck his diplomatic penis back into the wasp-infested pumpkin that is North Korea just to see what happens did that sentence actually end it never end oh no it did it did end frankly the foreseeable future these days stretches at best four weeks into the future coincidentally when I'll be finishing my US tour

full dates at andy'soltsman.co.uk

in fact I'm beginning to think that the foreseeable future might already have ended.

And because of the way the news works, even the past isn't even retrospectively foreseeable anymore either.

I mean, what is truth?

That's what this war of story says to me.

Are we even recording a podcast right now?

Do you even need us here, Andy?

We seem to have just like sunk into a strange soliloquy.

Motoring news now.

And Helen, you are the Bugle's official motoring correspondent.

Yeah, I think I have a suitable objectivity because I'm not right in there as a motorist.

No, I mean, motoring is not, I mean, with all due respect, and much as I love you dearly,

it's not in your top thousand things I'm best at list.

No, no.

I've left that to the others.

As the bollards of Tunbridge Wells would testify.

I mean, as the car I was driving had been mightily trashed by you driving it into a church wall sometime before, I didn't really stand a chance.

That was just vengeance for all the religious wrongs our people have suffered.

It was fine, except for the suspension and brakes.

But that's nothing to do with this story about Laverne Duran of Maryland, who was very angry one day because as he waited at a red light alongside a school bus, he thought some of the kids on the bus had thrown a bottle at his car.

So he got out of his car, banged on the school bus door.

The driver refused to let him on, thinking he would be a danger to these kids.

And so he did the only thing any of us would do, Andy.

He hung on to the front of the bus,

thumping the bonnet with his furious fist whilst the bus driver slowly drove to the nearest police station.

Although he was arrested before they got there and now faces several charges for disorderly conduct and causing damage to the bus.

But I'm sure he had a great time having a little thrill ride.

Right.

But how fast was the bus going?

It looks not fast.

Well, I mean, this is a potential, very exciting breakthrough for road safety, isn't it?

If all buses, lorries, and trucks are forced to have an angry shouting man attached to the front.

Clamped, nailed, strapped, or otherwise, then all traffic will slow down.

It looked like he wasn't having much trouble clinging on, so there's probably a foothold already there for people who want to try this.

But also, it's a bit of a buffer, so you're not going to bumper scrape anybody because there's a man squidging the bumper in between.

What exactly was he shouting in the window?

He was shouting.

Was it educational?

Because it was a school bus.

No, he was shouting, open the door, open the door, and the driver was

providing rebuttals for opening the door, and the children behind were screaming.

I guess it is the first law of driving a school bus.

Do not open the school bus door to someone who's clinging onto the front of your bus shouting, open the door.

I think it does suggest that they've temporarily gone beyond the point of rational discussion.

What was the plan?

Was that he was going to go into the school bus and yet who which kid did this?

Yeah, then he was going to kill all of them until one of them first off.

Right, right.

It is also not proven that any bottle was thrown.

He may have hallucinated the bottle.

Was that a bottle or a brick?

Bottle.

Oh, I heard it was a brick.

Well, he claimed it was a bottle.

Oh, right.

Stop embroidering this story.

My mistake.

I must have misread it.

But, I mean, I guess...

you know, it would have been okay had he been shouting like an interesting question

through the window, such as the bottle, which weighs 1.2 kilograms, hit the door of my car, which was three metres to the side of and four metres backwards of level with the bus window, out of which the brick was thrown.

If my car is moving five miles an hour quicker than the bus and both vehicles maintain lane discipline, with what force and at what angle of release trajectory must you throw another bottle identical in size and shape to the previous bottle if you want to hit my rear windscreen in exactly 18 seconds time?

That would have been that would have been fine for me.

And this is why you shouldn't act in the heat of the moment.

Yeah.

You should prepare your maths questions.

And because every moment is a teaching moment, right?

Columbus Day in America.

Yes, that's still a thing.

Columbus Day in America is the day where we celebrate Christopher Columbus discovering America and committing a genocide, which is strange because if there were people there, you didn't really discover it.

But we still teach children this because we've kind of bought into the lie.

It's really hard to do anything.

I mean, there's been a lot of talk about changing Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples' Day, which just happened in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, and other places I can safely play.

But at the same time, it's really kind of difficult because it's already kind of in the DNA District of Columbia, Columbia University,

Columbia Airspace and Sea Museum, which is a very strange museum that focuses both on airspace and the sea.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, that's a good combination, isn't it?

Well, at this point, you can just make up what Columbus did, so it doesn't really matter.

Well, because he didn't actually go to America, did he?

He went to various

countries.

He went to the Caribbean.

Yeah, he went to the Caribbean, and he thought they were Indian people, which also always bothered me

because basically what he did to the indigenous in the Caribbean is what he wanted to do to my ancestors.

Like, that was his goal.

He just turned the boat the wrong way.

Yeah, pretty much.

Or he didn't know there was land there, so it's like, no, you meant to go to India Street, not India Avenue.

It's north first, not northwest first.

And so he did all these terrible things, assuming it was us.

Donald Trump's proclamation for Columbus Day said this.

The permanent arrival of Europeans to the Americas was a transformative event that undeniably and fundamentally changed the course of human history and set the stage for the development of our great nation.

Now, if we were to give you all the historical footnotes that need to come with those 33 words, this podcast would be about 16 years long.

That is at best edited highlights.

Well, it certainly did change the course for Indigenous Americans.

Right.

And I'd imagine if they do get this as their day, it's going to be a day of sorrow, right?

Right, right.

It's not super celebratory.

No.

The day of

the day of

also, Trump noted Columbus as an Italian-American, but he moved at a young age to Portugal and then worked for this Spanish monarchy.

So essentially,

he was an immigrant

who, had Donald Trump been king of Portugal in the late 15th century, would have bumped into the nearest available wall and been sent back where he came from.

Yeah, but he was a white immigrant, Andy, so

keep up.

Also, Columbus, this this was interesting.

In 1502, he wrote something called the Book of Privileges about how much money and possessions he thinks he was owed by the Spanish monarchy.

How much is it?

Well, I don't know, but I mean, you can see why he's, you know, maybe a man after Donald Trump's heart, just banging on about money.

Bit entitled this time.

Also renowned for mismanagement and brutality and despotic rule.

I mean, they are peas in a 525-year-long pod.

Also, he went and had a brief visit to the Caribbean islands before f ⁇ ing right off.

I mean, the similarities just go on and on and on.

When Columbus went to hell, do you think he thought it was heaven?

That's a very interesting philosophical question.

Do you think if Columbus had been alive a few centuries later, he would have had his own chain of tower block hotels?

I think that's likely.

He was eventually arrested and imprisoned for his gross misgovernance.

Let's hope those parallels.

That'd be a warning.

The fact he thought it was India was also strange because it didn't have any of the clues that perhaps Marco Polo and others have written about.

Like, there was no spice, there there were no elephants.

Really, there was nothing that would appear like India, but he was so stubborn, he's like, well, it must be

close enough for people playing cricket.

Right.

Celebrity news now.

And Helen, you're our celebrity correspondent.

Some absolutely sensational news.

Mary Berry, the de facto Deputy Queen of England,

former host of the great British Bay Con.

Judge, Andy, judge, judge.

Judge, not.

Yeah, get ranking correct.

Sorry.

She has announced some shocking news.

She has.

She has decided that dining rooms are over.

Or at least she stopped using her dining room.

She realised that she and her husband were only using the dining room at Christmas, so now she's moving house, getting rid of the dining room, going to have a bigger kitchen.

Apparently, her husband doesn't approve, but she's going ahead nonetheless because that is feminism.

This is a 21st-century relationship.

Right.

And kitchen dining situation.

Yeah.

So dining rooms are fed.

Like if Berry's not behind them, 82-year-old Mary Berry, who I'd imagine has thrown many semi-formal dinner parties in her time.

But Andy, you have a dining room.

Yeah.

I think you should just take the plunge and turn it into a home casino or something.

Right.

I don't want to turn it into a shrine to Mary Berry.

That's a good use of the space.

Do you have the Bake Off in America?

I've never heard of this programme.

It's the Great British Baking Show, it's called There.

Oh, right.

I have American friends who are very into it.

I've never heard of this programme.

Right, I mean, it's basically, if you you can imagine this.

It's like Project Runway for Cakes.

It's a programme where people bake cakes.

I mean, that's pretty much it, isn't it?

Do they get taken down a runway?

Not always.

No runways.

It's all in a big tent.

It's the most popular TV show in the history of the universe in Britain.

It's essentially our national refuge now, isn't it?

I think, because it's tantalising, you can look at all these cakes, but you can't talk to eat them.

I thought your national refuge was drinking.

Well, it's drinking sports and the Great British Bake Coffee.

It's essentially the 21st century Anderson shelter as far as I'm concerned.

Breaking news coming in from the United Nations.

Apparently all necessary recipes have now been cooked.

The UN Special Meals and Nibbles envoy Prunetia de la Suave announced there are more than plenty recipes for everyone now.

If you collected all the published and unpublished recipes in the world and all the ones on the telly even the ones where they just tell you how to peel a carrot or crack a f ⁇ ing egg, not to mention all the f ⁇ ing cakes and shit, and cooked three three-course meals a day plus an afternoon snack for 100 years, you would still have eight billion recipes left over.

So let's just draw a line under it and try to work out how to stop bola bears sinking and shit like that.

So this could revolutionise television.

No more new recipes.

Shark Burke News now.

Helen.

Yes.

You are our

shark

expert.

And our shark costume expert.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, Andy,

at the start of October, Austria became the fifth European country to institute a law informally known as the Burke ban.

The Anti-Face Veiling Act means that people's faces must be visible from hairline to chin.

So presumably false moustaches and beards are out.

Well, hang on.

From hairline to chin?

Yeah.

As a member of the balding community.

Yep, no matter what.

And that's not prejudiced against me.

Yeah, sorry.

Right.

But really, it's prejudiced against the 150 or so women in Austria out of the total 700,000 Muslims in the country who wear face coverage.

So

this is an attempt, they say,

to make society more integrated without these fatal barriers.

But people didn't really complain when it was screen masks or whatever.

It is very specifically timed with the influx of Muslim immigrants.

But two men have fallen foul of this law in the past few days.

Firstly, a millionaire activist who has pledged a million-dollar fund in order to pay the Burger Ban bills of women in Europe who've been done by it.

He was wearing a photo of Austria's foreign minister across the bottom half of his face and a suit covered in 100 Euro bills.

And he's had to pay a fine for it.

So you can't wear someone's face over your own face.

And then a man hired...

Sorry, did you say 100 Euro bills or 100-year-old bills?

100-Euro bills.

Not the shriveled bills of long-dead pelicans.

Well, the article didn't state that.

They might have been there just incidentally.

And then another man who was hired to be a promotional mascot for an electronics shop in Vienna called Muck Shark

was dressed as a shark.

And a member of the public shopped him to the police.

And

two police officers approached him, asked him to remove the shark's head because of the Anti-Face Failing Act.

And he said, I'm just doing my job, and refused to take it off.

Now he's got a fine.

But police have been asked to relax the law for Halloween.

Because of the costumes.

But they can make a lot of money.

I like how Halloween is valued more than the religion of Islam.

That has more importance to the people of Austria than a religion that is thousands of years old.

It's a sacred festival.

But also the shark.

I mean, Austria presumably is not that scared of sharks as a nation, being as it is.

It's notoriously mountainous and landlocked.

What if they come in on the train?

Oh, yeah, I hadn't thought of that.

What if it's really cold?

You can't cover your face?

No, cyclists have been stopped for wearing scarves over their faces.

The thing is, the law was written in a way to seem like it wasn't a religiously intolerant law and that means people are very confused as to how to interpret it.

So they're interpreting it to mean anything on your face.

Well how many beekeepers have died?

They're outlawed now.

One other piece of celebrity news, David Cameron, God rest his soul, if it is ever found, has taken a job with an American electronic payments firm.

Does he not already have a full-time job?

What, of writing his memoirs and enjoying the trash fire that he lit in this country?

His full-time job presumably involves going around the United Kingdom house by house, saying sorry, and writing a preemptive apology note to people who haven't yet been born.

Hori, have you ever employed a former Prime Minister?

Briefly, as a joke writer.

Right.

It was John Major.

I was about 10 at the time.

Did you come up with a good?

No, no, no.

It was a terrible idea.

And I don't know why he responded to my letters.

He was just pleased to be asked.

Yeah.

Apologists don't do anything.

This is the strangest job that a world leader, a former world leader, has taken on since Nelson Mandela opened up a sandwich shop called a Mandeli.

The signature sandwich, the full Nelson, was turkey, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, sweet peppers, and the secret Robin Island dressing.

It was tears, Andy.

That was what was in the dressing.

Just one

piece of advice for David Cameron.

Next time you buy a magic lamp in an antique shop and a genie pops out and offers you three wishes, maybe drop the, can I I put my flodgil in a dead pig's mouth in favour of, please can you let me win my next referendum.

That's all I ask.

Just to quickly wrap up, sport now and the USA has been knocked out of the World Cup, Hari, whilst you've been here.

Knocked out.

Oh my God.

The USA men's football team failed to qualify.

They've qualified for the last seven World Cups in a row, but they lost out to the mighty Panama and Honduras.

Not European football.

Well, no, it's just football.

Oh, we call it European football.

No, it's football.

I think you'll find it's just called football.

We call it European football.

You are very wrong.

I mean, America must be absolutely devastated not to have made it to the World Cup.

Yeah, so devastated that I didn't even know we were playing right now.

Yeah, because often grief makes you forget things.

Yeah, I blocked it out immediately.

Well, just check the headlines on the U.S.

newspapers.

Do we still have Pele?

Pele?

Yeah.

What was that?

He was a soccer player.

Oh, Pele, right.

Pele.

I thought it was some kind of contactless card payments.

He played European football.

Right.

I mean, this is a huge story in American sport.

A new logo for USA.

It has to be very exciting.

Well, the biggest question that has been discussed regarding European football is when will Colin Kaepernick be signed by European football teams?

Right.

That has yet to be resolved.

Well, taking the knee, I mean, that's...

People don't just take the knee in European football, they just throw themselves to the ground, roll around pretending to be injured.

That's the ultimate form of protest against racial injustice in America.

Just a quick update on World Cup injuries with the tournament now just what nine months away.

Brazilian stars Waduinho, Melton de Silva, Mayonez and Squelchi all struggling to be fit for Russia 2018 after an over-elaborate gold celebration for their grub Grimio resulted in them crashing a bobsled into a canal.

Italy's Arnaldo Grottibelli could be out after a grade 3.6 preening injury suffered whilst trying to do his hair in a wing mirror of an articulated lorry whilst riding a Vesper.

And Costa Rica's Darvarius Quacklich is in a race against time to shake off his his squateriary quadriceps strain that of course he picked up punching the air after winning his first ever game of solitaire on his granny's computer all World Cup news on the Bugle the official podcast of the FIFA World Cup

so that brings us to the end of this week's this week's bugle sorry about the 45 minute delay at the start Hari it's been a delight having you in the same continent yeah it has been really nice Hari I'll see you in November in America I'm excited yeah well Well, last time I was on, we started Bugle 2.0.

Are we ending Bugle 2.0?

I hope not.

Because I have children.

They need food.

And you want a legacy for them.

That's what I'm all about, Helen.

Yeah.

And all the Victorian shit you bought off eBay isn't enough.

What Victorian shit did you buy off eBay?

That is a whole different show.

Anyway, Helen, thanks for joining us.

Cheers.

You're FRO around the world quite soon, aren't you?

Yeah, why not?

Why not, eh?

So I'll bump into you at some point on some concept or other.

Your daughter's already been measuring up the attic for her occupancy.

Can't wait to have our attic back.

I can move into your dining room that you're not even using.

Harry, have you got any dates to plug?

Yes, I do have some dates to plug, Andy.

Yep.

I will be at the St.

Louis Helium on October 19th in the Chicago at the Hideout on the 29th of October.

The Wilbur on November 3rd.

And then you have Oakland, Fox Theatre, December 1st, 12.13 at the Aladdin Theatre, which you will also be playing in Portland.

And then a very special

show on the 15th of December in Seattle, Washington at the Neptune.

I hear it's a very special show.

It's going to be a special one.

Very special.

Right.

Well, that was not encrypted.

What was he saying?

But it sounds like it's going to be pretty special.

Don't forget you can listen to Helen on The Illusionist.

Until next time, Buglers.

Goodbye.

Thanks, as ever, to the Knight Foundation, easily the Bugle Podcast's favorite 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.