Bugle 4007 – Mid Atlantica

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4007 of the Pulitzer Prize winning newscast, The Bugle, for the week beginning Monday, the 5th of December.

Was it the Pulitzer?

I forget, it just blurs into one.

It wasn't the Pulitzer, was it?

So it's the Bugle Relaunch Award for most bugle-like relaunched podcast of the last quarter of 2016.

Still, silverware is silverware.

I am Andy Zoltzmann and I am in London, a city visited by every single one of the past 20 British prime ministers because I like to hang out where it happens.

And joining me from New York City, returning for his second bugle appearance, it's a man who, last time he was on the show, had not at any point in his life written, recorded and released a brand new stand-up album as an instantaneous response to a lunatic winning a presidential election within a week of that lunatic winning a presidential election.

That is no longer the case.

It is Mr.

Wyatt Senak.

Hello, Wyatt.

Hello, Andy.

Thanks for having me again.

So,

your new album, One Angry Night in November, which is available for free download on your website, wyattsenak.com.

Yep, that was trying to avoid taxes.

That's a good way of taxing.

That's the best way of avoiding taxes.

Exactly.

To earn zero money or just

earn loads of money and do it anyway.

I'm trying to figure the second one out, but in the meantime, I'll just keep...

I'll try to nail the first one.

So it was...

You basically recorded it and released it within a week of

the Trump Ocalypse.

Yes.

Was that therapeutic or did it just make everything worse?

It was somewhat therapeutic for me.

I mean, here's the thing.

It's not even jokes about the election.

It's just stories about a cat that I once met.

And then that cat had a lot of thoughts about the election.

So I guess in that way, maybe it is about the election.

But it's mainly just a bunch of really interesting cat stories.

Well, you know, I mean, a good time to release a bunch of cat stories.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I mean,

how is the intervening what's it almost a month now since

since since the election?

How's that treated you the month?

Yeah, we're into almost a month with this baby that we didn't really want and

are now stuck having to raise.

It's very weird.

It's very, I think.

It feels as though we're sort of settling into it, but also,

I think, still hoping that maybe something will change or that we'll all get abducted by aliens and they'll fix everything.

I think at this point, that's where we're kind of like, okay, this is

this works, but also I've seen the trailers for arrival.

That doesn't seem so bad.

I mean, we've been trying to get over our own

vote from June, nearly six months on now,

from Brexit.

And how is it going for you?

Well, it's been up and down, and

I don't think either side has fully come to terms with what's happened.

No one seems happy,

winners and losers.

I mean, we did, I think the time we started just about coming to terms with it was when the Olympics began, and we had a proper distraction.

So maybe you just need to...

We need an Olympics.

You just need to cling on.

You need an Olympics.

Yeah, we need an Olympics to take the taste out of our mouths, but we're not, I mean, we don't have one coming up.

Like, the best we could do right now is try to pull a winter Olympics together, but nobody likes that.

Nobody.

That's not going to bring people together.

Oh, yeah.

Look at the ice ballet.

Nobody wants that.

That's not going to save us.

So we're just going to have this horrible collective taste of bile in our mouths for, I guess, until

yeah

maybe well we don't care about World Cup so

yeah

what else is is there maybe there's a track and field competition that we could get really excited about oh what well there's the world's world athletics championships in London next August

oh right okay yeah there are certain things that just don't they don't even come across our our airwaves and usually if they have the words London and sports, it's not going to, our filter just blocks it out automatically.

Well, I'm sure something will come along.

Sport always saves us.

Sport is the one

guaranteed savior.

Yeah.

This is Bugle 4007.

4007, of course, the highest recorded number ever used as the count in a game of hide-and-seek.

That, of course, what the Anglin brothers and Frank Morris told the Alcatraz prison guards to count to back in the 1962 San Francisco Bay Hide-and-Seek Open Championships.

The IHSF afterwards imposed a maximum count of 120 for all competition play.

The week being Monday the 5th of December,

on this day in 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull appointing inquisitors to root out witchcraft in Germany.

And on the exact same day, just 448 years later, the German-born physicist Albert Einstein was given an American visa.

Coincidence?

I don't think so somehow.

No.

He's got the hair of a witch.

Put a hat on that head, and

that's a witch, warlock, or wizard.

Your pick.

Which is also a fun game to play when you're doing a witch-burning.

Witch, warlock, or wizard.

Yeah, and that's...

I mean, what is the technical difference in a wizard and a warlock?

A warlock's a malwitch.

Right.

So

I think that is the only difference.

Right.

Right.

But a warlock and a wizard, I think a wizard would tell you it's an Ivy League degree.

Right.

Yeah.

They would, I think warlocks go to state schools and wizards go to private upper crust institutions.

Wizards are the...

The elite.

Yeah,

they're the Harvard elite of spellcasting.

Right.

So they're basically responsible for Trump

winning the election, the resentment against the elite wizardry.

Yeah.

Oh, I definitely.

Disgusts me.

Yeah, it makes you look at those Harry Potter movies a little differently.

On this day, in 1766, exactly 250 years ago, on Monday, James Christie, the London auctioneer, held his first auction sale.

And to commemorate this historic occasion, we are giving away a free audio top-end art auction bid for you to use at a sale of your choice.

Here it is.

£25 million

or dollars.

The Bugle is not responsible for the payment of successful bids.

Any artwork, livestock, industrial equipment, international or Indian cricketers or spouses purchased at auction using a Bugle audio bid are the sole responsibility of the bid of the use of Andy Doltman's voice being successful bids do not entail a sales contract with Mr.

Dalton.

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

This week, the Vladvent calendar.

Vent your spleen about 24 different aspects of the behavior, politics and words of Vladimir Putin.

One per day throughout December.

We pick it up with this for Monday, the 5th of December.

Vladimir, I heartily disapprove of your intervention in the Ukraine.

I want you to know that.

Tuesday, the 6th of December.

Geez, Putin, race, Syria.

Can you stop mistaking one of the gravest political and humanitarian crises in human history for your own personal plaything?

Thank you, you absolute tool

Wednesday the 8th of December Putin I'm getting fing cross about all the people who keep disappearing after being critical of your regime stop it Vladimir stop it

Thursday the 9th of December oh for heaven's sake Putin just cut out the middleman grab a big bushy moustache and make people call you Joseph

and finally Friday the 10th of December.

Vladimir, you know how your country's GDP fell catastrophically by over 25% due to the global oil price decline?

Maybe think about rebalancing your economy.

You know, the economy you're allowed to become completely dependent on oil.

Fuck you, Putin.

There'll be more from the Vladvin calendar throughout December.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week and well, let's have a Brexit update.

I am here in London where let me just check out of the window.

still smells like Europe for now but give it a couple of years and that could all change which explains why the mayor of London Sadiq Khan has suggested that London could seek out its own Brexit deal.

He said that if the government ignores the needs of business and pushes ahead with a new system that cuts off access to skilled workers, we will have no choice but to look at a London-specific solution.

Odd times we have a Labour mayor threatening a Tory government trying to get a better deal for big business in the city of London.

I just don't know who I am anymore.

Is it viable that London, I mean, could this lead to London just becoming completely independent from the rest of the United States?

Could London simply swap with Munich or be moved to Gibraltar?

Ooh, a London secession.

Yeah, I mean, that's...

I mean, there is...

Well, I think...

Definitely, after what has happened in our two countries democratically this year, there must surely be the live prospect of a London-New York City hookup to form a floating super city somewhere in mid-Atlantica.

Ooh, I would like that if, yeah, if they could both sort of break off and maybe we could go somewhere slightly warmer.

Right.

It's strange that just a year ago, the United Kingdom was worried about Scotland leaving, and now here it is, London, I feel like, trying to backdoor its way out of the United Kingdom.

And yeah, if they and New York and,

you know, maybe

like a few cities like Austin and Portland could kind of come in to sort of buoy this relationship, I think we could make a great, a great little nation there.

I mean, Portland, that's a long way for Portland to get, though, from the west coast.

I mean, are you thinking Panama Canal?

I mean,

can you fit a city down the Panama?

Or we have to go right around,

I mean, is it going to be through the Northwest Passage?

I mean, that could get icy, taking an entire city around that way.

Well, I think once the New York-London connection happens, I feel like it's one of those things like when you hear about a really great party, other cities will find their way to the party.

Right.

It's not on us to get everybody a cab to the party.

Maybe we call them a cab home, but not to the party.

So we're basically looking at London and New York mooring themselves somewhere around about the Azores, halfway across the Atlantic, as a kind of a beacon of hope for for all humanity yeah a shining city on a hill i believe someone once said but in this case not a hill just like

relatively warm water

it's uh i mean it it is i mean it's so bizarre the the the aftermath of brexit all the the arguments about it's become very much in british politics the elephant in the room um albeit this is an elephant that everybody is talking about all the time as you would do if there was an elephant in your room especially if the elephant has crapped all over your best armchair and has now kidnapped the TV remote control, which has grasped firmly in this trunk and is now watching back-to-back episodes of Attenborough's wildlife programmes and going, oh yeah.

As we've discussed previously on this august news outlet,

since voting for Brexit, what we've basically been doing here is arguing furiously over what Brexit was, other than, of course, Brexit, which it is.

Are we going to have a hard Brexit, soft Brexit, squidgy but firm Brexit, clean Brexit, dirty Brexit, filthy Brexit, or screaming uncontrollably about immigrants stealing all our biscuits and urinating on our Christmas presents Brexit?

We're trying to decide what kind of divorce we want from the continent we used to call home.

I don't know if it's going to be a full split with no further contacts, just removing all photographs of us with Europe taken down off the walls as if the whole sorry romance had never happened, or a quickie divorce with occasional meet-ups to rekindle the old trading magic.

No longer partners, but still trade f ⁇ buddies, no strings, just for fun and economics, but we're still free to mess around with other trading blocks.

Or just a long, slow, gradual breakup, increasingly despondent, leaving deep emotional and economic scars and an inescapable sense that we should have worked harder at the relationship before having a stupid one referendum stand with ourselves.

These are tough times.

Tough times.

Why?

I mean, how's

are you excited in America that

you have this new global facing Britain?

that

we could maybe rekindle our old national romance.

It's here i think we're

we're concerned but more so because we're looking at you all

and hoping that uh we can sort of forecast what's coming for us so i think there's a part of it that as you're going through this divorce we're trying to see okay well you all set the model for us and then if it is some kind of divorce where oh there are occasional hookups okay

we now look at that as the blueprint.

But right now, it seems like you all are going through a divorce where you're still roommates and

it's not going very good as some people start labeling things in the refrigerator that may or may not have been theirs to begin with.

I had a friend who's at school

whose parents divorced.

And what they did was they just took one end.

Well, I mean, it's a long time ago now.

Oh, I mean, you didn't specify it.

You, I don't know, if you have a friend in school now,

I don't want to tell you how to live your life.

No, thank you very much, Wayne.

That's very tolerant of you.

And in a year that's seen so much intolerance, that open-minded attitude can only be a beacon of hope.

But his parents split up and basically took one end of the house each and put a wall up

in the middle.

Yeah.

Wow.

And I think there was even a hatch to pass meals through the wall.

that the kids kind of great.

I would hope though that when it was time for each one to like go like, oh, okay, now it's your father's weekend, that they would still make the kid not go through the hatch, but like pack a bag and walk out the front door and then walk to the other front door, knock on the door, and just like there still has to be some some sort of formality to it all that I would hope would exist.

Well, I hope they'd drive him 10 miles away to

a service station, petrol station, and hand him over at a four-year-old.

Well, that'd be even better.

Maybe even share a lift home afterwards.

David Davis, the Secretary of State for working out exactly what the f we voted for, has said that we could now leave the EU and then essentially use the money that we've saved to pay for access to the European single market.

Understandably, people who wanted us to not just leave Europe, but leave the entire universe, not happy with this.

The critics have said this is essentially like cancelling your membership of your local boxing club, but still turning up every night to let everyone else punch you in the face.

So I don't know.

We are torn as a nation, White.

We are very, very, very torn.

Yeah,

you're screwed.

It's maybe time for you all to take back Australia.

Well, I I mean, this is definitely one option, is the relaunch of the British Empire, because we do have a pretty impressive track record of just thinking, right, there's not enough going on here.

Let us go and explore.

This isn't done right.

Let's fix it for them.

Some news just breaking.

Latest government statement,

they've been analysing Brexit.

Turns out we've not just voted to leave the EU or the single market or to get rid of anyone from this country who can't trace their bloodline directly back to bodicea at the very least but we've also voted to leave uefa the governing body of european football and to join a new football continent antarctica so uh all the the um

England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales will be becoming part of the Federation Continentale of Football in Antarctica and the islands around southern oceanic longitudes, or to give it its full official acronym, Beckoff and Die Athole.

Asshole.

You're right, there was no need for that.

Anyway, strap in penguins, you guys are about to get beaten 2-0 at Wembley in a disappointingly turgid encounter.

Brexit not the only meaty economic issue in Britain this week.

It turns out the new five pound notes launched to

much fanfare earlier in the year because it enabled you to forget about the money in your pockets of your trousers and put them through the wash and not have to worry about it.

It turns out these five pound notes are not suitable for vegetarians because they have some animal fat in them.

The plastic polymer the notes are made from contains small amounts of tallow, which is derived from

animal waste products from the processing of animal corpses.

And people are not happy, Wyatt.

I mean our vegans in particular are up in arms because they can no longer snort cocaine up our five pound notes.

These are dark days for this divided country.

Yeah, if you're not a meat eater, you're definitely not a meat sniffer.

The Vice website calculated the total amounts of tallow used in all the banknotes would require the collected corpses of not 1,000 or 1 million dead cows, but 0.5 dead cows.

There's not a lot of meat in these banknotes.

So I think, I mean, understandably, some people are not happy.

I mean, I guess the problem is what kind of precedent

does it set?

What if the Bank of England have been

actually although it's a small amount of beef?

They've been slaughtering one animal per note so that each banknote has its own unique DNA fingerprint to help combat fraud.

What if we let this pass and we've got a new £10 note coming out next year and they think, well, people didn't mind the tallow slathered all over the last year's fivers like butter on a big bastard's breakfast bap.

Why don't we staple an endangered butterfly to every single tenor just to get the conversation started?

What happens if £20 notes are withdrawn from circulation and replaced with rashes of bacon?

What then?

People do not think about the implications of these apparently trivial issues.

I mean, this does feel like it's sending you on a soylent green path.

First-year economy is sort of in the shitter post-Brexit, and now

that's a technical economic term.

I think it's.

I went to Wharton.

I didn't actually like attend classes I just went

but I think once that starts yeah this is I feel like putting a little bit of meat product in your money it's gonna save there's not gonna be a need for bread lines your your ATM machines just become your automated breadlines where people will just go and they'll pull out a five and then they'll just eat it directly

I've I've eaten in London.

I don't, I, you gave us, you just gave us a wagamama here.

And let me say, I've been to Wagamama before.

I'd eat a five-pound banknote over another bowl of soup at Wagamama.

First, you all have your sort of isolationist Brexit thing happening.

That spreads to us.

Now you give us Wagamama.

What is next?

What else will you curse us with?

Well,

cricket, hopefully.

I mean, we had one go at that a while ago, and

you rejected it.

I mean,

that could be America's salvation in the Trump era.

If Trump learns to play cricket, that could civilize the man.

Oh, that.

I would actually, I would love if every televised speech he gave, instead of giving a speech, it was just him learning to play cricket.

Just

me and Nigel Farage are going to play cricket, but I got to learn how to play it first.

Well, Farage is a big cricket fan, so maybe this explains why he's been sent as our unofficial man in Washington.

Yeah.

It is a cricket-based scheme.

It all makes sense.

The uses of tallow through history are quite interesting.

It's been used in candles,

soldering, engine lubrication, even aviation fuels.

The US Air Force

were using a jet which was part powered by tallow, apparently.

Oh, right.

The meat plane.

That famous meat plane.

I mean, I don't know if I mean, if you're a could you can you be a vegan fighter pilot?

Presumably, you have to be prepared to kill

kill some things if you're if you're a fighter pilot.

So a bit of meat in your aeroplane fuel isn't gonna isn't gonna upset you.

Unless you're a fighter pilot who's vegan, who's just going to possibly shame your enemies.

You're not going to actually shoot someone who'll just fly by and look at them sternly and like hold up some photos.

You're that kind of fighter pilot.

Are there many of them in the U.S.

Air Force at the moment?

Not as many as you'd think.

Yeah, they don't go far.

After their first mission where they come back and they say, well, I didn't have any confirmed kills, but I really made a lot of people think about what they're going to do.

It's a bizarre story, this.

It's one of these things that seems simultaneously a massive overreaction and entirely justified on religious or ethical grounds.

And it is amazing that no one thought, are some people not a bit uncomfortable with using particles of dead stuff when they're not really necessary these days, particularly given that we are Britain and there is a precedent historically for people getting annoyed by tallow.

In the 1857 Indian mutiny,

apparently

Hindus were disgusted by the use of tallow in

cartridges for guns, and that sparked this

massive mutiny.

I basically basically provoked a war.

So

maybe historically,

we should have known that.

But if there is one thing we have as a nation, it is the ability to completely forget bad things we've done in the past.

That is one of our defining features.

This also may be your passive-aggressive way to try to combat immigration and also

vegans and sort of what many might consider liberal elites: is that, oh, okay, if you put meat in your money, then all of a sudden, okay, you get rid of anybody who has a problem with that.

If you don't like it, then get out of the country.

All the red meat Brits will have their meat money to themselves.

Well, that's, I mean, that could work more effectively than most of the other attempts our government has made to

stop immigration, which basically involve looking cross and putting up an extra set of cliffs at Dover.

Interestingly, Scottish banknotes are okay, apparently.

The Scottish notes do not consider tallow, partly because tallow there is they don't waste it on banknotes.

It's considered a culinary delicacy in Scotland.

It's by-products of rendering animal corpses.

The perfect accompaniment to other Scottish culinary delicacies, such as mashed-up rat lung, socky Hall Street vomit scrapings, no Glaswegian night out is complete without a packet of those beauties, and deep-fried fossil anuses.

So there is a reason for that.

Do they still put toenails into a sheep's stomach and serve that

as a children's dish?

Yeah, that's what makes us grow up tough as a nation.

Yeah, the Scots, I think, are

probably the most inventive culinary nation in history.

Just because they look at things that no one else would think of putting in their mouths and think, well, give it a go.

Put it.

I think the phrase, one man's trash is another man's dinner is a Scottish phrase just on Donald Trump Apparently last year he only followed 47 people on Twitter and one of them was former Australian cricketer Damian Martin

How did you find that out Chris?

I just googled Donald Trump cricket and that was the first result.

He followed Damian Martin on Twitter.

Good cricketer.

Very elegant batsman.

Yeah.

Fast batsman.

Damien Martin commented that he didn't know why.

Wow.

Well,

here's the other thing.

There's a really great documentary called Small Potatoes, Who Killed the USFL, which was the United States Football League.

And the answer is Donald Trump.

And it's this documentary about how he wanted an NFL team so badly that he bought a USFL team and then put the USFL into direct competition with the NFL in the hopes that he could then sue the NFL for being a monopoly because at the time they were the only

football league on television on like all the major networks and and so

he did this in the process killed the USFL but was hoping he could sue his way into the NFL

and instead the case he was right, but he was awarded $1

because

he was awarded $1 because

they were like, we saw what you did, and what you did was basically ruin one business so that you could try to get something for yourself, which should have been a warning about what a Trump presidency is going to be like.

But maybe this whole thing has still just been a really long game

to get rid of football and replace it with cricket.

Well, that brings us on to this week's trumpet section.

What it's not just Britain that's refusing to accept an election results.

There are recounts imminent in America, and Donald Trump has claimed that there's been voter fraud.

Now, it's not often you get the winner in an election claiming there's been fraud.

I mean, this

is extraordinary, isn't it?

Yeah, it feels as though even the winners at this point don't want the result.

Like, he's saying, yeah,

he thinks that he should have won the popular vote.

And then you have Jill Stein on the other side asking for recounts to possibly see that maybe Hillary Clinton won the Electoral College

or

won more states than she did.

And at this point, it feels as though maybe we could broker some sort of negotiation where

Donald Trump is willing to trade some of his Electoral College votes for a popular vote win,

which might solve all our problems.

Is it not Jill Stein thinking that, you know, thinking, well, I can't have only got 1% of the vote or whatever she got.

I want to recount.

I reckon I've got at least 60.

Yeah.

I mean, could we be looking at a Jill Stein presidency

if she's right?

I think at this point,

anybody,

even if

a zoo animal were to somehow get enough Electoral College votes, if the ghost of that dead gorilla Harambe were to somehow pull out a win, I think people would be much happier with that than what's going on right now.

When you have both winners and losers freaking out, it feels as though, okay, yeah, this is maybe, we should maybe just restart this whole game.

Let's just, let's just have one more year of Obama.

And why don't we just restart this election process all over again?

Because nobody seems that happy with what's happened.

There is something I will say that as an American, this feels like one of those similar things when you were a child and somebody told you for the first time in your life that Santa Claus wasn't real and you go crying home to your parents and they're like, no, no, Santa's real.

And then they write you like a really shitty letter that they sort of, that they give, that they give to you from Santa, but it's on family letterhead.

So you're like, well, it sort of works, but

this says it's from the Smiths and we're the Smiths.

What?

You've just ruined Christmas for at least 20% of our listeners who are still clinging to

hope that Jill Stein might save Christmas.

Yeah,

that too.

Trumpity, Trump, Trump, Trumpity, Trump, Trump.

Look at Jill Stein go.

The latest Trump appointments to the Trump cabinet have been interesting.

He seems to be basically going after the hyper-wealthy elites that his voters wanted him to take down by punishing these hyper-wealthy elites with the ultimate punishments, forcing them to serve in his cabinet.

That will tease him.

But one exception to the multi-millionaire capitalists who will be tasked with bringing multi-millionaire capitalists to heel under the instructions of a multi-millionaire capitalist is the incoming defense secretary,

sorry, defence.

Is it defense or defense?

If your team is down, it's defense.

But you're doing well, defence.

Okay, so I mean, I don't know how Trump, I mean, that could change midway through his presidency, I think.

He has appointed James Mad Dog Mattis.

I mean, that is a worrying nickname for

a defense secretary,

a widely admired

military figure.

But being Donald Trump's defense secretary,

he could be very, very busy indeed.

That could be, I'm not sure 24, 7, 3, 6, 5 could be enough to be the Trump Defense Secretary.

He said he's got

interestingly contradictory nicknames.

Mad Dog is one, but also he's known as the warrior monk.

I mean, how do those two fit together?

A mad dog and a and a monk?

Well, and not just a monk, a warrior monk.

Like, uh, yeah, like I've always assumed monks to be very peaceful people,

and he's that would suggest that he's aggressively peaceful.

Like,

we want quiet in here, and I will choke everyone in this room to get it.

Namaste.

That does square with some of the things he said.

Some quotes from

Mad Dog Mattis.

This, be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.

That's when you walk into a restaurant.

That's what you got to do.

Job interview,

restaurant, anything.

Be polite, be professional, but also have a plan to kill everybody.

I'm sure there was a context that explained that, but out of context, it's much more entertaining.

I think the context was speed dating.

He was appointed because Donald Trump's preferred candidate was unavailable.

That was Hannibal Smith from the A-team, who could not take up the post due to fictitiousness.

That is despite prolonged negotiations with the Asian actor George Pepard, who played Smith in the hit 1980s TV series, but sadly died more than 20 years ago.

That's a shame.

See, I always assumed Trump was a howling mad Murdoch kind of guy.

Well, I think he's got him lined up to be

Joint Chiefs of Staff or something.

Yeah, you'd expect that.

He'll find a place for Murdoch, unquestionably.

Yeah.

And he's going to treat the rest of us like B.A.

Barakas and slip us a Mickey in our milk so he can do whatever he wants.

We'll just wake up on a plane, just confused, knowing that we hate being on planes

now Andy you were talking about your financial problems in the UK and

here in the United States and in the city of New York we've got some financial issues of our own there was a man just this this past week who was in New York City who was walking by an armored truck, saw a bucket on the back of the armored truck,

looked at the bucket for a while, then took the bucket and walked down the street and found out that the bucket was filled with gold flakes.

A five-gallon bucket filled with over $1 million in gold flakes, which

raises the question,

who needs that many gold flakes?

What are you doing with that many gold flakes?

I mean, it's obvious that those gold flakes are probably going to Donald Trump as some sort of post-election celebratory cereal that he may eat.

You know, everything he touches turns to gold, whether it's by physically painting it gold or by eating something and shitting all over it so it's not covered in gold.

He has a mantra he lives by, and we have to respect it.

I mean, another question that arises is, I mean, it's all really well having, you you know, was it $1.6 million worth of gold in the back of a security truck?

I mean,

the guy working the security truck, I guess, has a few questions to answer about leaving a bucket full of gold unattended.

But how did the gold get into the bucket?

Who had a pile of $1.6 million worth of gold flakes and thought what possible receptacle would be the most appropriate for this to be transported and came up with the answer, a bucket.

Yeah, how did that happen?

What has happened to your country that people can put 1.6 million dollars of gold in a bucket?

Yeah, and think that that is acceptable.

It says something about the perhaps the declining value of gold that we don't trust gold as we no longer want to live by a gold standard anymore, that it's good enough for a bucket.

Buckets are where fried chicken go, they're where paint go,

they're things you put on your head when you're having a toga party.

It's

really,

yeah, we do things a little differently here.

I don't know how your toga parties go, but ours, if there's not a bucket on somebody's head, then it's not a toga party.

I mean, that's how the ancient Romans used to wear it, wasn't it?

Exactly.

Yeah, that's its bucket is derived from the Roman word party hat.

Thank you very much for that info.

Yeah.

The other part of this story that I find interesting, though, is there's video of the guy, and you see him walk past and notice the bucket, and he stares at the bucket for a while, and he does a few passes where it seems like he's scoping out the bucket.

I don't think he knew what was in the bucket.

I think he may have just thought, you know what?

I could use a bucket.

Somebody,

his spouse maybe said, hey, we need to mop the kitchen floor.

Go out and get a bucket.

And

he was on the way home, remembered, bucket, right?

I forgot the bucket.

Oh, wait, there's a bucket.

Should I take that bucket?

Okay, I'll take that bucket.

And then took a bucket, took it home, mopped the floors, and now the floors are worth $1.6 million.

In other news, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro

has finally died,

having beaten what Cuban officials claim were more than 600 attempts to assassinate him,

mostly by America's CIA.

I mean, those are mostly dating back to the years when Wiley Coyote was acting director of the CIA and was trying to take out Castro with giant magnets, Acomi earthquake pellets, and CIA agents strapping themselves to giant fireworks and firing themselves out of cannons.

It's extraordinary.

I think I read,

there was a documentary called 638 Ways to Kill Castro.

See, there's even over

600.

Did you ever attempt to kill Fidel Castro, Wyatt?

I mean, I assume most Americans must have had a crack at it at some point.

Inadvertently, I did.

Yeah, inadvertently,

as a child, I sent a letter to Cuba and didn't realize that the crayons I was writing my note to Fidel Castro, that the crayons were laced with arsenic.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

Easy mistake to make.

Yeah, it was a school thing.

They had the school draw pictures and write letters to Castro.

And yeah, the CIA had laced all of the crayons with arsenic.

We only found out after six of the children died.

Some kids just love to eat crayons.

Oh, well, yeah.

I mean,

that's, I mean, they're quite good for you, actually, I think.

Eat a bit of crayon every now and again.

Balanced diet.

Not with arsenic, they're not.

No, no, I accept that.

Arsenic.

I mean, as a parent, I've learned the hard way how dangerous it is to feed arsenic to children.

Your emails now and this came in from Dave Berkowitz in Schaumburg, Illinois, which is a good name for a town.

Said, dear, hello, Andy.

Can the Bugle financial section provide some good, solid advice on quality investments in a world where it will soon be illegal to sleep more than 20 miles or 100 kilometers in the UK from the place of your birth?

So, I mean, well, we talked about gold in buckets, Wyatt.

Are there any?

I mean, you're a financial expert, obviously.

I mean, is there any advice you can dispense to our listeners?

Well, as I said, I've been to Warden, and I would say at this point, your best investment is a canoe.

I think canoes are great investments because, whether on land or on sea, you can sleep in it, you can move it around, and if worse comes to worse, you can use it to fend off a bear attack.

The whole bottom edge of it is all it's all sharp like an ice skate.

That is a kind of wisdom that we have you on the show for.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for that.

And

it's an economic fact that canoes historically have never depreciated in value.

There has never been a canoeing company whose shares have declined.

That is a fact.

And just quickly before we wrap up this week's show, this came in from Jeff.

Dear Andy, just checking to see that the email address has not yet stopped working.

And it hasn't.

And that email address is hellobuglers at thebuglepodcast.com.

So we'll have more of your emails next week.

That brings us to the end of this week's bugle.

Thank you very much for listening.

We'll be back next week with Mr.

Nish Kumar returning from exciting globe trotting expeditions.

He was just about to go to Mongolia last time he was on the show, wasn't he?

So we'll see how Mongolia

treated him.

I hope he's brought us, I don't know, an elk or something back as a souvenir.

Mongolia may be the place where we all go to after our countries fall apart.

Well, there's a lot of space in Mongolia.

It is one of the least densely populated countries in the world

ever since,

well, I don't know.

They basically invaded Europe about 700 years ago, didn't they?

Chris, you're an on-site historian.

It wasn't 700 years ago, was it?

I don't know.

Time flies these days.

It sounds like they might be a blueprint for our futures.

We'll be back next week with that.

In the meantime, don't forget to book your tickets for my Soho Theatre run from the 20th of December on the Soho Theatre website.

I'll tweet a link to it as well.

Are you telling me to do that or are you telling them to do that?

Yeah, you are.

Wyatt,

I could even get you at least a £2 discount on a ticket.

But just

the kind of guy I am.

Just you, yeah.

All right.

I like Croft.

You've got to earn a living, mate.

Right.

Don't forget you can download Wyatt's new album, One Angry Night in November, on his website.

Anything else

you'd like to plug?

Your show at the Soho Theatre.

Thanks, mate.

Cheers, buddy.

you should go check it out you actually andy you should check it out partly because you're in it i'm in it i should write it first and then i'll check it out so anyway 23rd of december we could wing it

i could i could i could wing it anyway buglers thank you very much for listening we'll be back next week and white will be back with us uh after new year hopefully yes uh until next time goodbye goodbye The Bugle is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, made possible with great support from our founding sponsors, the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity, chaos and teamwork.

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.