Buglemas Eve – A Preview

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers, this is Andy Zoltzmann speaking and it is almost time for Bugle Relaunch.

Bugle Relaunch.

Sit by your radios and await await further instructions.

Do podcasts go out on radios?

I will admit I'm a little bit rusty, and in any case, the further instructions are just awaits until Monday, the 24th of October, when the first episode of Bugle Relaunch will be launched.

It's nearly here, Buglers.

It is nearly here, and everyone here at Bugle HQ is getting very excited indeed.

Admittedly, Bugle HQ is currently a small flat in Seattle, and it's only got me in it, but the point does stand.

And on this little pre-launch sub-bugle, we will be hearing from some of the new co-hosts who will be entertaining you over the forthcoming weeks, months, years, centuries.

What the hell, millennia?

Let's aim long.

A quick thank you to everyone who has come to see Satirist for Hire on my North American tour, which is now entering the final stages.

Still shows to come, and pay attention.

Most of these were not in the original schedule I mentioned last time.

In Los Angeles, at the Nerd Milk Showroom on the 17th and 18th.

I think the 18th is full or nearly full, so please come on the 17th.

Then Boston, Stroke, Cambridge, Cambridge on the 19th.

Not that Cambridge, the one with the big university.

So that's really not helped things, has it?

This is the Cambridge just across the river from Boston, the American Boston.

The big one in Massachusetts, not the less big ones in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Texas, New York State, or Virginia.

Isn't the internet fun.

That Boston Cambridge gig is on the 19th at the Oberon, then followed by two shows in Toronto, both on the 22nd at the Second City in the John Candy Theatre, and finishing up at Cobbs Comedy Club in San Francisco on the 25th before I catapult myself back across the Atlantic to safety on the 26th.

Details and ticket links at andysaltsman.co.uk.

Amidst all those shows, I will be recording the first Bugle Relax Bugle in New York with Hari Kondabolu.

That's this chap whom I spoke to just the other day.

Hari Kondabolu, welcome to the bugle.

Let me just, well, I'll do my introduction of you for buglers who may not yet know your considerable Irva.

You are, of course, the five-time All-American Gentleman's Freestyle Pretzel Twirling Champion, semi-finalist in the American Air Harps Accord Open of 2006.

And

have I missed anything out there?

Those are the two main achievements in your career.

I feel it was best to introduce you to the show with bullshit.

Because that's what you're going to be receiving.

Initially, I was disappointed you mentioned the semi-finals appearance.

I prefer just the championships.

I don't know why you would bring up a semi-finals appearance.

Oh, right.

Sorry, that brought back some harrowing memories.

I mean, there's a reason I'm only in the pretzel twirling game now.

So it's great to have you

joining the Bugle.

You will be joining me for the relaunch episode,

which we're recording in New York on the

21st of October.

Which happens to be my birthday.

Oh, well, what a.

Right.

Well, I mean, you've really dropped that in there.

I'm going to have to bring, you know, cakes.

I mean, more.

I don't know.

Do you need a special throne for recording on your birthday?

Well, I would like bags of Maynard's wine gums.

Is that too much of a request?

Not from a British perspective.

I mean, that's the ultimate expression of Britishness.

So, I mean, you will be, much as John Oliver abandoned Britain and joined America, I guess the bugle can gradually assimilate you into the United States.

After Brexit, of course, we are basically.

I mean, we voted for Brexit to gradually retake the United States.

Well, I find it funny because it's like you had the empire and then you lost it.

And then I'm not saying the EU was an empire, but certainly it gave you considerably more reach.

And then you voted to eliminate that empire.

So that's a fascinating way to blow two empires.

Yeah, I mean,

if we blow a third one, I think we're banned from empires forever.

You get three strikes and you're out.

Now, of course, we will be recording in the final weeks

before the election in America, which some listeners may have heard is happening

on November the 8th.

So, I mean, it could be a pretty short-lived return for the bugle if Armageddon happens on November the 9th.

Have you enjoyed the election campaign so far?

Enjoy is an interesting word, Andy.

I have enjoyed making fun

of the candidates.

Do I enjoy it as a human being?

No, not at all.

A person who hopes to maintain his dignity and the dignity of others?

No, not one bit.

But if I just focus on my occupation as a comedian, you know, you know what it feels like?

When I do stand up considering the possibilities that Donald Trump might be president,

I feel like Nero.

I feel

like I am telling jokes as the thing falls apart and everything is ablaze.

Okay, so you see yourself very much as the de facto emperor of the United States.

Well, I think when I'm on stage, I am a god.

Oh.

So for those spurts of 45 minutes to an hour 15, certainly.

Well, I mean, we all know, we all know that, Harry.

And no doubt you will prove that in our relaunch episode on the 21st of October.

I can't wait to get you.

Well, if I may ask you, how many other co-hosts are there?

Well, one at a time.

So

there'll be, well, in the initial roster, there's five.

And

we'll

see how that flies.

So if I'm interpreting this right,

you are saying I am one-fifth of the man John Oliver is, and

potentially, depending on how this goes, I might be even less of a man.

Yes.

I mean, you've interpreted that from the subtext.

I guess it's clearly there.

I mean, we can't.

Also, I'm covering my back.

I mean, because over the first

eight and a half years of the Bugle, I had 100% record for losing co-hosts.

Admittedly, it did take eight and a half.

So I've got to cover my back.

I've got to have enough that when you all flounce off to become America's social conscience,

there's other people ready to go.

Yeah, but that doesn't actually help your win-loss record because if you lose four and you keep one, you'll be

two and five.

Right.

No, one and five.

Right.

I mean, that's better than Norton one, though, isn't it?

I don't know.

Let's not get too statistical at this point.

But I mean, it's good to think already before having done your first episode of what will happen once you've left.

So that's, you know, it's good.

It's good to think long term.

That was Hari Kondabolu, leadoff hitter in Bugle Phase 2.

I will then hot foot it back across across the pond for Phase 2, Episode 2, on the 28th of October.

Following Hari Kondabolu into the Bugle co-host hot seat will be an altogether less American kettle of fish, Nish Kumar.

Hello, Nish.

Hi, Andy.

How are you?

Yeah, I'm good.

I'm good.

I'm just backstage getting ready to whop out some serious show business.

All right.

Well, I mean, that's what we expect from people who are coming on the bugle.

Right, the absolute cutting edge of

showbiz.

Still to hear some opera singers warming up in the background.

That's the

punk rock intensity I'll be bringing to the bugle.

Right.

I mean that's your standard rider for all gigs, isn't it?

Yeah, for opera rehearsal.

So you'll be joining me on the 28th of October.

Currently, as we record this little chat, it's midway, it was party conference season back home in Britain.

I mean how have you coped with that horrifying ordeal?

Well, the emphasis is heavily on the party, Andy.

This is really when British politics comes to let let his hair down and weave that hair into shapes that say alarmingly right-wing things.

So obviously Brexit has been the

dominant thing in Britain

this year.

I mean,

are you optimistic for the future?

Are you going to be bringing hope to this podcast?

Well, I don't know.

I don't want to dash any expectations, but in the interest of complete openness and honesty, when I found out we'd left the EU, I immediately had violent diarrhea.

your body was satirizing the democratic choices.

The Nandos that I had on January, on June the 23rd this year, voted leave with an overwhelming majority.

It was hard Brexit, Andy.

Yeah, not that hard, by the sounds of it.

Well, I think I could officially appoint you our Brexit correspondent on the bugle.

As we chart the next, what, 50, 60 years of mayhem that will unfold.

So

I'll lock you into that.

We could be in for a spicy couple of decades.

Well, I look forward to hearing your take on those decades over the next 20 years, Nish.

Let's aim long term.

Before we meet a couple more of your incoming Bugle Meisters, would you like to hear some bits from my US satirist for Higher Tour?

I sincerely hope so because that's what you're about to hear.

So if you don't want to hear them,

put your fingers in your ears.

Now, the acoustic quality at some of the venues has not resulted in absolutely tip-top broadcast quality recordings, but these bits come from the show at the Aladdin in Portland, which began half an hour after the conclusion of the second presidential debate, which will surely go down as one of the absolute high points in the history of human democracy, culture, and language in general.

So, the first one, Pip Allen.

I realize this is being said awfully late.

When did you send this?

This morning.

Yeah, I mean, there's been about ten more since then, to be honest.

But given recent events, I'd like you to satirise the audience for going to a comedy show instead of watching what is going to be unmissable television.

Now, I mean, what I mean, presumably you meant the debates, not realizing that it

wasn't actually a full, or did you mean something, is there something else later?

No, I didn't know it.

You didn't know when it started.

Look, if you're going to email the show, do some background research.

Got too much to ask.

Or maybe the unmissable television being the post-mortem of pundits just saying, oh my god, what has happened to this country?

Is anyone here going to vote Trump?

I'm not going to judge you.

I think you should all vote Trump.

Vote Trump.

That is the message.

You must vote Trump.

You must.

And I will tell you why.

Because it has now reached the stage where it is safer for America and better for the world if you vote Trump into the White House rather than release him back into the wild.

Take one for the team, America.

At least there will be cameras on him at all times.

But anyway, so it was a 6pm.

I thought, yeah, because when you sent it in, I checked the start, so 6 p.m.

start.

So I reckon that what most of you probably did, you started watching it at home, 6 p.m.

by 6.15.

You probably dived headfirst through your television sets in frustration at what's become of your nation's political discourse.

45 minutes to tweezer the glass out of your face, clean yourself up, get here by 7.30.

There you go.

No need to miss it.

But

it was, I watched the first debate, I sort of followed, like I said, the second debate by text, by reading the quotes from it, and my arm is bizarre.

Hillary Clinton, the pin-up girl of not really hitting home with the broader American public,

who's captured the imagination of middle America very much like a baby spider captures an Apache helicopter in its web,

versus Donald, the shitstorm of unfathomability, Trump, a one-man political tumor caused and aggravated by a horrendously unhealthy national political diet.

So, I mean, what the f has happened to your democracy?

You go home tonight, you go home tonight after this debate, you look into the skies, people of Portland, you will see something flashing through the sky.

It looks like maybe a shooting star or a comet.

You're thinking, well, that wasn't there last night.

I wonder what that is.

I'll tell you what that is.

That is the corpse of George Washington.

who will have been spinning so fast in his grave during that debate that he will have power-drilled his way out of it and flown into orbit, and is just looking down on what was once his nation, shouting, It wasn't supposed to be like this.

So,

Trump, pretty much one of the first things he said was in his time as a politician over the last year and a half and he said, I can't even believe I'm saying that.

No, Donald, neither can the rest of the universe.

Hillary said, There's nothing America cannot do as a nation.

That much has become painfully obvious over this campaign.

Donald Trump said,

I have, quotes, I have tremendous respect for women

and women have tremendous respect for me.

Now,

out of all the unbelievable things Trump has said in this campaign, I think that might be the most outlandish.

And then it got on to the environment.

Trump started banging on about clean coal.

I'm not a scientist, but isn't that like kind of championing low-fat heroin?

I think Trump in some ways has been very badly misrepresented in the press though, particularly this grab them by the pussy thing the other day.

He says you have to draw people's attention, particularly women's attention, by explaining to them the Pacific United States social engagement, entrepreneurship and ethical economic enterprise exchange or pussy.

Which is designed of course to foster socially responsible trade and business dealings between the US and the Asia-Pacific region.

That was Andy Zoltzmann speaking there, and you will be able to hear more from him when the bugle relaunches on the 24th of October.

Issue three of the Relaunched audio newspaper will feature the wonderful Wyatt Senak for a pre-presidential election panic.

Then, to bag and label everything after the big vote on the 8th, it will be Hari Kondabolu again on the 11th.

Following which, to see how the rest of the world is reacting to the festival of crackpot democracy we've all enjoyed in Britain and America this year, it will be someone from the rest of the world, India specifically, and Anuvabh Powell.

There have been some

interesting news stories in India.

A slight flare-up in the historic

ding-dong with your neighbours Pakistan.

I mean, how likely is it that as our Indian correspondent, you will be basically our Armageddon correspondent?

You know, this is a good time for the India to to be poised in the world economy, right?

The pound to the rupee is at 82 rupees to the pound, best it's ever been.

America is whatever it is.

So, you know, this would have been a great time to sort of be a player in the world economy.

But we went with the slightly more mild alternative of a war, a war

situation.

We thought that would be the most calm, peaceful thing to do.

That's just just what the world needed right now as well, was another

major flare-up.

flare-up exactly exactly exactly between two nuclear-armed states uh uh with a total population of one and a half billion people it's it seemed like what

what better event gives out a message of peace that the dalai lama would be proud of

than i think your work your words about america there america is whatever it is is probably the most astute analysis of the state of the u.s that anyone has delivered this year well thank you andy thank you.

And, you know,

you are

traveling across the United States currently, as you've informed me, like many great novelists have.

You have.

Oh, I'm a novelist.

Oh, good.

You know, like many, many great British people have.

I remember a famous Dickens quote about America where he said,

you know, the more I discover the Americans, the less I know about myself.

And

it seems to be true again.

You know, like I think Churchill had said that Americans will eventually do the right thing after they've exhausted all other options.

Right.

Well, they appear to be really going for all.

They're finding new other options that no one knew existed right now.

Following Anuvab on the 25th of November, you're going to get not one Zoltzmann, not three Zoltzmans, but two Zoltzmans, me and this other one who I am blood related to.

It's my sister, the undisputed

Nebuchadnezzar of podcasting.

Can I call you that?

If you must.

What did Nebuchadnezzar do?

Biblical crimes?

I don't know.

All kinds of stuff.

He just ran the gaff.

Okay, fine.

There were certain question marks over some of his behavior, I believe, according to certain texts.

Anyway, it's my sister, Helen Zoltzmann.

Hello.

Hello, Helen.

We're currently separated by a significant ocean.

And a continent.

Yes, how are things?

So I'm in Seattle.

You are in the holy city of London.

How is Britain coping at the moment?

Well, it's pretty sad in your absence, but I'm sure you can hear the weeping from all the way over there.

I mean, you've been in podcasting even longer than I have.

And

podcasting pretty much is the only hope for humanity, would you say, at this stage?

I mean, that does seem to be pretty much a fact.

I think it is a fact, Andy.

You just said it's a fact.

Therefore, it's a fact.

It's recorded, so it sounds like a fact.

We're living in a post-fact universe now, so anything can be a fact.

Live that dream.

Now, in terms of having two members of the same family in this show, I mean,

that's got to be a huge step forward for humanity.

I mean,

is it going to open the gateway to

just all manner of siblings just trying to come out of the woodwork?

Well, what you mean more Zoltzmann siblings trying to get in on the act?

Because we have a brother, brother, and I think he'd be pretty keen.

But then all of these long-lost ones.

Yeah, I mean, that's...

I mean, let's not.

How many siblings do you think we've got?

Well, I don't know.

I mean, it could be like after the Russian Revolution, be all these

bogused tsarinas and Tsareviches coming out of the woodwork.

I didn't even realise what we were getting into by joining forces.

I'm going to back out.

Oh, crumbs.

Okay, well, that causes logistical problems.

Anyway, well, I will see you in a few weeks after the end of my US tour and we will speak into a recorder on the 25th of November.

Thank goodness.

Yes.

Yes, as we were our mother prefigured this as she gave birth to both of us five and a half years apart and before the internet even existed.

Well she's got a lot to answer for.

So there you go.

It is T-minus X days now until the return of unquestionably one of the universe's top two or three million podcasts in its new form.

Bugle Relaunch.

Show a bugle relaunch.

Where X equals the number of days between whenever you're listening to this and the 24th of October, the day on which show 1 will be released.

Do come to the Satirist for High shows if you can and or want to, both ideally, but I will take either.

Those dates again, Los Angeles on the 17th and 18th, Boston, or more realistically, Cambridge on the 19th, Toronto, two shows on the 22nd, and San Francisco on the 25th.

Details at andyzaltzman.co.uk.

The next time I speak to you, buglers, the bugle will be officially barking again.

And I'll play you out until then with some more chunks of commission satire.

Scott Van Vechten.

Hello, Scott.

I'd appreciate seeing you address the Californian diaspora, which has left Oregon overflowing with sandal-wearing stubble farmers.

I heard there's

no Californian stickers.

Is there a big backlash against how many Californians are in tonight?

Burn them?

So

what is your beef with Californians?

Property value.

Property value is what they're pushing up.

Sorry?

They're too good looking.

They're breaking apart the marriages of the hideous Oregonians.

Is that it?

What else?

Umbrellas.

Umbrellas?

What they bring umbrellas or?

They use them.

What?

They're supposed to just let rain fall on them.

Get wet as God intended.

Either use nothing or a arc.

Nothing in between.

And is it really that bad?

Is there genuine hostility?

There is?

Their cars are too shiny.

Yeah, I can see that that is.

Amidst the blazing sunshine I've enjoyed in Oregon, I can see that a shiny car is a bit of an issue.

Okay, well let's look at this.

How big is Oregon?

98,000 square miles.

How many people live in Oregon?

Four million.

How big is the United Kingdom?

93,000 square miles.

How many people live there?

About 68 million.

How big is Bangladesh?

It is 53 million square miles.

170 million people there.

You can take some Californians!

The world is struggling with migration at the moment, and it's huge.

I mean, in America, this has been a big thing of Trump's campaign.

Yet America is...

I mean, one solution, I guess,

would be use the middle bit.

You know.

just give it a go.

Layla Barker.

I appreciate if you satirise the sport of cyclocross.

And my boyfriend has been obsessed for years and somehow convinced me to participate in a sport that has cost me thousands of dollars in bike equipment and medical bills.

So cyclocross,

so basically it involves cycling round and round a circuit up

in these kind of hills and mud and you have to carry your bike a bit.

Is that right?

So it's the perfect metaphor for life, which is what sport should be.

In that you have to overcome numerous obstacles, most of them unnecessarily put in your way by other people.

Struggle desperately merely to go round and round in circles.

It's expensive, painful, and pointless, and you end up knackered with a sneaking suspicion that everyone else has been cheating.

In exactly the same place as you began, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

The origin of CycloCross is interesting.

There's different views on it.

One is that it originated in France as a means for French people to be able to fit in more affairs into their hectic daily schedule by cycling from village to village to screw each other.

Hence the onions that go with bikes in France because they'd eat a raw onion after their sexual encounters with other people's spouses to camouflage the scent of their lovers' perfume.

And others say it's a radical branch of Christianity, CycloCross, that believes that Jesus was forced to bicycle to Calgary on his execution day carrying the cross on his shoulders

and that he intended to use the bike which he'd miracled out of a disappointing cheesecake served at the Last Supper as a getaway vehicle.

There you go.

But it's part of this, it's increasingly popular.

I was reading CycloCross, which more and more people seem to be doing these sports that are needlessly painful and difficult, like of the tough mudder you have out here in Portland.

They have Iron Man triathlons, extreme titanium, granite, alloy man, ultra-triathlons, which you have to swim through the largest tank at a municipal sewage works, cycle up a fing mountain on a kid's tricycle without wheels, and then run 80 miles blindfolded the runway up an interstate highway with a cheese grater strapped to your grumble chunks

before wrestling a bear and performing an appendectomy on yourself using a garden spade and a jar of peanut butter as an anesthetic just because it makes you feel alive.

Oh, I've raised $150 for my local rat sanctuary.

Oh, f off.

Play golf.

Now, um.

yours sincerely, Layla, aka by my Starbucks names of Leia, Lola, Lala, or Taylor.

So, I don't know, I'm Starbucks names, that's so, because they write your name on.

So, they mishear your name a lot.

Is that the problem?

How do you work out your Starbucks name?

Is it your first pet and your mother's maiden name?

That's me also, I can't remember.

That would make me Tyrannosaurus Stalin.

Oh shit, my secret's out.

I think it would be better if it was your earliest childhood memory and the cause of death of your paternal grandfather,

which would make me embarrassing you're a nation human catapult.

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.