Andy's Random News Balls

Speaker 2 The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Speaker 1 Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4361 of The Bugle, the universe's most reliably unreliable source of fact, anti-fact and everything in between.

Speaker 1 I'm Andy Zoltzmann coming to you from the northern hemisphere before I reverse polarity later this week when I head south to Australia for the cricket.

Speaker 1 It is the 17th of November 2025 as this troubling century crankles onwards through the early fumblings of its second quarter and joining me to scientifically analyse everything that is going on in the universe now, then and hence and or to talk about a carefully selected wodge of news stories from this week.

Speaker 1 Firstly, from Mumbai, it's Anuvabh Pal. Hello Anuvab.

Speaker 2 Hello Andy.

Speaker 1 How's Mumbai working at the moment? Noisy, I'd imagine? Yeah, well,

Speaker 2 lots of construction noise, but that's what we call a Monday.

Speaker 1 That's never a problem.

Speaker 2 But something mad has happened in Mumbai, Andy. I was driving

Speaker 2 my wife to an appointment she had, and our car was stopped.

Speaker 2 and we asked what the problem was and they told us the American comedian Conan O'Brien is playing cricket and those words are exactly as they sound.

Speaker 2 We got out of the car, and the American comedian Colin O'Brien, who's slightly taller than most Indians around,

Speaker 2 was playing cricket

Speaker 2 on the road for a TV show in

Speaker 2 cricket test match white outfits. And I figured I should mention this because it's so many worlds colliding

Speaker 2 specifically for you, Andy, that I thought that this should be mentioned.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, look, I mean, I'm all in favor of people playing cricket anywhere whether it's in the street or not in the street and but clearly i appeared in series 18 of taskmaster in full cricket whites and conan o'brien is clearly trying to steal my look now to be honest it's the first time anyone has ever tried to steal my look but

Speaker 1 court cases are very much on the way conan if you're listening to this which i assume you are um also joining us um who uh well from uh nearer where conan o'brien generally uh plays his cricket in the street from a medium-sized island in the extreme western portion of the North Atlantic Ocean.

Speaker 1 Well, Brooklyn on Long Island. It's Josh Godraman.
Hello, Josh.

Speaker 3 Hello. Thank you for having me, Indy.
There's also, it's been

Speaker 3 just outrageous traffic in New York City as well. The streets have been congested with all the

Speaker 3 billionaires and other super rich leaving town as they threatened to after the mayoral election a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 3 It's just been a non-stop caravan of the wealthy, butlers loading Eames chairs into moving vans and priceless artworks being being loaded as they sadly leave the city like the end of Fiddler on the Roof.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, tough times, obviously, for the hyper-wealthy of

Speaker 1 New York.

Speaker 1 Has everyone been forced to start speaking Russian yet, or is that is that phase two of the Mamdani in communization phase?

Speaker 3 The

Speaker 3 mandatory duolinguo sessions have begun but it hasn't been enforced yet on the streets right

Speaker 1 matter of time

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 2 i mean look uh josh you know i was born in a communist state in a very communist part of india in the 1980s and a lot of lenin statues have gone missing lately and i'm wondering if they're going to show up in your hometown yeah the brooklyn dsa has been on a mission and they've been scooping up lenin statues this is this is the rebirth of woke, right?

Speaker 3 In the late 20 teens, we were taking down statues of Confederate generals. Now, we're putting up statues of communist figures.

Speaker 1 Statuing has begun.

Speaker 1 I like the idea of being born in a communist state.

Speaker 1 I mean, as in you were born in the state of Bengal, rather than that you personally were just born innately communist, because most babies, I think, are capitalists and they seem very selfish and really all about themselves

Speaker 1 initially. So well done for being

Speaker 1 a commie baby.

Speaker 2 You know, I had leanings towards Das Capital before being born and I'm very fortunate to have been born in a communist state.

Speaker 2 So it always worked out.

Speaker 3 Born in a communist state is my favorite unreleased Springsteen B-side.

Speaker 3 I think they ultimately ruled the accent he was doing was inappropriate.

Speaker 1 We are recording, as I said, on the 17th of November. I fly out to Australia in two days' time.

Speaker 1 I arrive in three days' time and the cricket begins in four days' time, which usually means that in five days time, England will have crumbled to jelly, if indeed you can crumble to jelly, which generally England finds a way of doing.

Speaker 1 But not this time. I confidently predict, quite confidently, and not predict, but hope.
But the cricket begins, as I said, on the 21st of November. So let's look for some historical omens

Speaker 1 for things that happened on the 21st of November that suggest that England are going to victoriously demolish Australia in the forthcoming cricket.

Speaker 1 In 1783, in Paris, Jean-François Pilatre de Rosier and François Laurent d'Arlande made the first ever untethered hot air balloon flight.

Speaker 1 Surely a sign that England on the same day in 2025, and bearing in mind that England is closer to Paris than Australia is, England will take flight in a truly historic manner.

Speaker 1 Admittedly, de Rosier did soon afterwards in another flight quite literally go down spectacularly in flames, flames, plummeting back to earth. But let's ignore that and focus on the taking flight bit.

Speaker 1 It's all looking good for England. In 1877, Thomas Edison announced his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.

Speaker 1 Surely a sign that it's time for England to change the record of recent defeats. It's all stacking up.
In 1900, the

Speaker 1 Impressionist painter celebr Claude Chaumida-Monnet opened an exhibition in Paris, which is surely a sign that England will put on an exhibition of crickets in Perth on Friday that will leave a really good impression.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's all adding up.

Speaker 1 1905, Albert Einstein published a paper that led to the mass energy equivalence formula, E equals MC squared, which surely stands for England equals magnificently undefeatable cricket squared.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's

Speaker 1 what an auspicious day for this series to begin. In 1918,

Speaker 1 an Act of Parliament was passed in the UK allowing women to stand for Parliament. Surely a sign that nothing will be allowed to stand in England's way

Speaker 1 on Friday. And in 1953, the Natural History Museum in London announced that the Piltdown Man's Skull, which was initially believed to be one of...

Speaker 1 Let me do that again, which was initially held to be one of the most crucial finds of fossilized skulls in human history, was in fact a hoax, but it was widely accepted as true for over 35 years.

Speaker 1 Surely, a sign that long-held truths, such as that England will have their cricketing arses diced, fried, and handed to them on a plate when they play in Australia, as has been the case on all but one tour in the last 35 odd years, is no longer true.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 adding those all up, it's hard to see any result other than England winning the series 5-0. You cannot fight history.

Speaker 3 I do love AD

Speaker 3 that

Speaker 3 even in this kind of,

Speaker 3 you know, picking, putting the pieces together, theorizing there have been no good omens for 72 years.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, that's pretty much bang on to me.

Speaker 1 As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. This week, we have a selection of long listens.
Newspapers

Speaker 1 such as the Bugle like to have long features these days.

Speaker 1 So our long listens that are going straight in the bin included a feature on the slow mulching to nothingness of the concepts of hope and progress in British politics.

Speaker 1 In the absence of any money in the Treasury, any sense of public support, and amidst the unworkability of politics in general in the skewed media instant dissatisfaction era, should Keir Starmer just try putting on a f ⁇ ing cape and see if that helps?

Speaker 1 The listening time on this one, 65 minutes, that's the introductory groan. Then there's another 10 minutes of breathing.

Speaker 1 exercises to calm down, a 30-second argument followed by a fist fight to wrap it up.

Speaker 1 Or you could try Cop It Till You Pop It, which is a long listen on all the things that haven't been achieved at the COP 30 conference in Brazil in humanity's efforts to one day persuade itself to put some effort in to an effort to start making an effort to save its future.

Speaker 1 The listening time on that, 35 hours and 12 minutes, parts two, three, and four to follow over the next three days.

Speaker 1 And also in our long listen, a special bugle exclusive, The Difference, a guide to how to tell the difference between things. Very useful in this age where there are competing versions of the truth.

Speaker 1 We tell you how to tell the difference between a genuine Stradivarius violin and a plastic toy violin that plays only four notes, depending on which brightly coloured button you press.

Speaker 1 We tell you how to tell the difference between strawberry milk and whale milk.

Speaker 1 Often you can tell by the reaction of the thing you're sucking the milk from.

Speaker 1 We tell you how to tell the difference between something that is genuinely historic and something that is described in an article about sport as historic. There's only a 0.03% overlap there.

Speaker 1 How to tell the difference between a pantomime cow and a real cow usually becomes apparent during calving season or at the abattoir or when cooking.

Speaker 1 If you're still not sure, consult a vet and/or doctor.

Speaker 1 We tell you how to tell the difference between a treaty and a press release, increasingly difficult, between rugby and medieval warfare, basically impossible, and between my Australian tour dates and my UK tour dates.

Speaker 1 The difference being that my Australian tour dates are sooner.

Speaker 1 Beginning in Perth on the 26th of November at the Comedy Lounge, then Brisbane is a bugle show on the second, a stand-up show on the 3rd of December.

Speaker 1 Adelaide on the 15th, Melbourne on the 22nd is a bugle live show. 23rd is the Zoltgeist, and on the 2nd of January in Sydney, details at andysoltbomb.co.uk including my UK tour.

Speaker 1 I'll let you guys plug stuff later on. Anyway, that section is in the be

Speaker 1 top story this week. There is no top story this week.
The world is random, capricious, and unpredictable. So we're going to reflect that on the bugle by randomly picking stories out of a bag.

Speaker 1 All our stories have a number rather than deciding one is more important than the other. We're going to leave that to chance.

Speaker 1 You might interpret this as not wanting to confront some of the more harrowing stories in the world, and you might be entirely correct on that. But anyway, let's go.
I'll just mix up the balls.

Speaker 1 Good luck to all the stories

Speaker 1 involved.

Speaker 1 And our first story is story number six, which is cheating pub quiz team sparks national introspection and scandal across the world.

Speaker 1 Anuvab, you are our British morality correspondent, being as you are from India, which was a former victim of Britain's not in

Speaker 1 not always

Speaker 1 unimpeachably clean

Speaker 1 morality.

Speaker 1 And you've been keeping an eye on the latest news from

Speaker 1 the pub quiz world, where, I mean, the nation has been shaken to its core by allegations of cheating.

Speaker 2 Andy, you know, when people talk about the empire, they always talk about railways, the courts, you know, people who are pro-empire, right? They never bring up quizzing.

Speaker 2 I think one of the biggest things that Britain left behind is this great love for quizzing. And the sad part of it is that we left behind the fun aspect of quizzing.

Speaker 2 And because Indians are so good at science and mathematics, we really got aggressive on the pedantics of accuracy of quizzing.

Speaker 2 So there have been many rooms I've been thrown out of because I got a year wrong or a particular Polish capital incorrect.

Speaker 2 But this is a far more interesting thing, which is in Manchester, a couple taking part in a pub quiz were caught cheating.

Speaker 2 And for months and months, they couldn't figure out how the cheating was being done.

Speaker 2 Till the owner of the pub, a gentleman called Mark Rackham, the pub's called The Barking Dog, and it's in a place called Ermston in Greater Manchester.

Speaker 2 And he decided he's going to embark like Sherlock Holmes on figuring out how to solve, as he called it, the crime of the century.

Speaker 3 Move over, Lou Veist.

Speaker 2 Kennedy assassination has nothing on this.

Speaker 1 Nothing.

Speaker 2 Lee Harvey Oswald, who? You know, this is where we are. So this gentleman

Speaker 2 did set up cameras. He just couldn't figure out how they were doing it because there were no extra chits and pieces of paper.
And I've known a lot of cheats, you know, in my time, in my school days.

Speaker 2 They've all done very well in life. Many of them are autonomous.

Speaker 2 Two of them run some of the biggest hedge funds in the world now.

Speaker 2 They don't look so brilliant, but they're also cheats. So I spoke to them, and then they said, you know, it's very obvious.
I don't know why it took so long. It's obviously the smartwatch.

Speaker 2 So what was happening is they were talking into ChatJPT on the smartwatch that was giving them the answers. And finally they were caught, disgraced and exiled from the pub.

Speaker 2 Although it has been reported that Mr. Rackham said they would allow them back for drinks as long as they're willing to face the shame and the wrath of their fellow contestants.

Speaker 2 I'm personally for beheading, but it

Speaker 2 seems like the laws in Greater Manchester are different.

Speaker 2 So yes,

Speaker 2 they have been shaped, but they won a series of some 10 or 15 quizzes in a row

Speaker 2 and all from ChatGPT on the smartphone and talking into it.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, this is really, like I say, it has shaken this nation to its core.

Speaker 1 It's really the only thing that Britain has left from what was once its ethical compass is a rigorous code of honor in the pub quiz.

Speaker 1 Everything else has been junked and jettisoned, but the pub quiz remains sacrosanct in our trivia nurturing British souls. And I mean, Josh,

Speaker 1 is quizzing popular in

Speaker 1 the USA, the same sort of communal where everyone sort of comes together to

Speaker 1 answer entirely pointless questions?

Speaker 3 We have a

Speaker 3 robust culture of pub quiz as well.

Speaker 3 And I think that this, the thing that gets me about this story, other than just the fact that it's tearing the fabric of society apart and has only been restored and mended when the culprits were caught, is that it took, because I'll give you three weeks of, wow, this couple's really good.

Speaker 3 And then by week five, when you're like, they're cheating, I feel like week six, you're wrapping this case up

Speaker 3 to not know that they're using Chat GPT talking into their smart, their smartwatches.

Speaker 3 This feels like, I'm just imagining the poor pub owner putting on a pot of coffee four in the morning, like, I'll get those sick bastards one of these weeks.

Speaker 2 So, when they interviewed the other participants, they said that this couple also spoke intelligently when not quizzing.

Speaker 1 So that was true.

Speaker 2 But Mr. Rackham

Speaker 2 is quoted, was not falling for that.

Speaker 1 So this is

Speaker 2 intelligence, which is... I just have one word of complaint, Andy.
I have taken part in quizzes just as an observer and sometimes with friends here in India and back in the UK.

Speaker 2 In both countries, I have been humiliated to various degrees by the quiz master.

Speaker 2 And I have a general, universal complaint, which is, why are quiz masters, and I don't know the politically correct way of saying this, such bastards?

Speaker 2 I mean, yes, you're knowledgeable, you know a thing, I may not know a thing. Why do you shave me in public? There was one quiz I took part in once in North London.
The answer was Darjeeling.

Speaker 2 I cannot remember the question. I didn't know the answer.
And the gentleman said, You're from those parts. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 3 Anavab, I'm going to come to your defense here. They only know things because they're allowed to look them up in advance.
There is no evidence that the quiz master is any smarter than you or I.

Speaker 3 They just get to do all the cheating that we're prohibited from doing.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Josh.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Because

Speaker 2 I've left many quizzes feeling broken.

Speaker 2 And, you know,

Speaker 2 I'm a stand-up comedian. You get the other opportunities to be completely destroyed by a system.
In India, I once took part in the quiz. The answer was Pink Floyd.
I didn't know it.

Speaker 2 By mistake, I said the Rolling Stones. And the quiz master said, Do you even listen to music?

Speaker 1 And I just thought.

Speaker 3 Once again, I'm going to come to your defense. You never have to feel ashamed for not listening to Pink Floyd.

Speaker 3 Don't let anyone on mushrooms tell you otherwise.

Speaker 1 I thought Pink Floyd was like Darjeeling was a type of tea.

Speaker 1 That wouldn't be quite cheap.

Speaker 2 Andy, how do you feel about pub quizzes? Are you a good pub quiz participant? Are you.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I don't do them regularly. I used to quite enjoy them.
The thing is, with my knowledge, is as if you've been listening to the bugle for a long time, you will know

Speaker 1 I like to make things up,

Speaker 1 you know, but I like to make them up accurately. So I need a balance of knowledge and ignorance for that to work.

Speaker 1 And I have, when I've done quizzes in the past, I have some areas of extreme strength and some areas of extreme and unbridgeable weakness so obviously sport is my key area of strength to the extent that I was once banned from an annual sports quiz because I was cheating in the sense that I just spent way too much of my life being obsessed with sport and my team had won it three years in a row they asked me kind of politely not to come back the following year.

Speaker 1 I don't know if they wanted it was because they wanted another team to have a chance or because they were worried about me and thought I I needed a bit of space to sort my shit out and be less obsessed with sport.

Speaker 1 Well, I wouldn't, and I did not back down.

Speaker 1 They stood me up at the gates of hell, and I still correctly answered Fal Cow as the player who scored Brazil's second equalizer against Italy in the 1982 World Cup, as Tom Petty so memorably sang.

Speaker 1 So, um,

Speaker 1 yeah, look, I understand the joy of the joy of the uh of the uh of the quiz. I once took part in the quiz league of London as an emergency standard in Paul Sinard's uh Paul Sinard's quiz team.

Speaker 1 So, I've competed at the very highest level.

Speaker 1 But also when it comes to, you know, look, I'm not squeaky, when it comes to cheating in quizzes, my wife and I do one of the newspaper quizzes and we do slightly cheat in the sense that if we almost get the answer right, we sort of give ourselves, or if we've given very, like several,

Speaker 1 if we almost get it right, we sort of give ourselves half a point. And if we've answered about three things and one of them turns out to be right, we get the full point.
So look, I cannot.

Speaker 1 I cannot sit in judgment of the people who've cheated in the pub quiz. Also, in terms of whispering into watches,

Speaker 1 I've never owned a smart watch, but I do whisper into my watch quite a lot, usually things like, slow down, slow down, time, you are a heartless piece of shit,

Speaker 1 that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 So look, I can't really judge these people. For all I do know is this country will probably never be the same again.

Speaker 3 They say they say that when you cheat, right? That, Andy, like when you're doing something like a quiz at home and you cheat, you're really only cheating yourself.

Speaker 3 However, you are are also only hoisting yourself to victory. So it is kind of a wash, all things considered.

Speaker 2 And sometimes I think you can be flexible if you're not with a group of people.

Speaker 2 For example, my wife and I do the New York Times quiz where you put historical events in order when they happened, right? So they'll say discovery of the penicillin and Muhammad Ali winning something.

Speaker 2 And you put them in order. And that's an easy one.
But like, there'll be some that'll be 1850 and 1880. And I'll get the order wrong.
And then in my head, I'll believe the order that I've made up.

Speaker 1 We are products of our times.

Speaker 3 That's tough because you'd never considered the order before, right? But until you've never considered what order those two things happen in.

Speaker 3 And then once you're asked, you just cement the wrong answer in your head.

Speaker 1 Yes, you can. So you're actually worse off than you were before.

Speaker 2 I mean, look, Josh, right now in my head, I know that the steam engine was discovered way after the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun because that's how I've done it in my head.

Speaker 1 Right, it's time for our second story.

Speaker 1 Ready?

Speaker 1 It's story number three.

Speaker 1 American coins news now.

Speaker 1 Josh,

Speaker 1 tough times, if you're fans of

Speaker 1 tiny coins in America.

Speaker 1 The Philadelphia Mint is going to produce its final batch of one cent coins this week after more than 230 years.

Speaker 1 So, obviously, you know, the one cent is not worth what it was when it was first minted back in 1793.

Speaker 1 You could buy a pretty large amount of French-owned land in the Louisiana and other surrounding areas

Speaker 1 area.

Speaker 1 But now, not worth quite so much. How has this news gone down with coin fans in America?

Speaker 3 This is huge. As you said, one cent used to go out further.
You could buy an entire farthing bicycle

Speaker 3 with just a penny back in the day.

Speaker 3 This is seismic. Fortunately, we do have a smaller coin, although it is more valuable, right? We still have dimes, thank goodness, and not just beautiful people and slang terms.

Speaker 3 This is big. The Philadelphia Mint is going to make its last batch of pennies, pennies, although this isn't like a crucial decision, right?

Speaker 3 Because you'd think if this were urgent, they would just not make that batch of pennies.

Speaker 1 Just

Speaker 3 have a bunch of copper lying around for wires and such.

Speaker 3 Also, just for anyone confused, let me disambiguate.

Speaker 3 The Philadelphia Mint is in Pennsylvania where they make coins, but a Philadelphia Mint

Speaker 3 is also what it's called when you hold down someone you're having a fist fight with and make them swallow a watch battery.

Speaker 1 That watch battery is the Philadelphia mint as well.

Speaker 3 Ceasing production on pennies. This is big.
It turns out that it costs us more to make them than the coins are worth. And it's expected to save the government $56 million a year.

Speaker 3 Although that is less impressive that when you figure out that we're saving money by not making money and we could just make more valuable money. I don't know how inflation works.

Speaker 3 Pennies will remain in circulation. So they're not the ones you have, they're still good.
They're still legal tender, but they are getting scarcer. I think about 60% of coins are not in circulation.

Speaker 3 They're just hanging out in piggy banks, between couch cushions, et cetera.

Speaker 3 Which means, again, inflation, it might hit the cost of wishes and fountains, as well as your thoughts, both of which have historically cost just one penny.

Speaker 3 So this is Donald Trump's America, a nation where even the price of having an imagination is rising.

Speaker 3 Just dreams are now more expensive than they used to be.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, he did, when he announced the plans earlier this year, he pledged to rip the waste out of America's budget, even if it's a penny at a time.

Speaker 1 And that was before he decided to spend $300 million or 30 billion pennies on a...

Speaker 1 golden ballroom, stroke national metaphor, stroke Learing Emporium, stroke architectural satire on the rotten state of democracy. So

Speaker 1 is everyone just going to send their

Speaker 1 unused coins in to help fund this glorious tribute to your great leader?

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 3 It's kind of where our nation is having history's largest give a penny, take a penny dish. And all Americans are going to line up in Washington, D.C.
and throw all their extant pennies into it.

Speaker 3 And then at the end of the day, that'll buy a nice,

Speaker 3 you know, a cup of coffee for for the people doing that construction.

Speaker 2 You know, I've sometimes seen retired people of a certain kind showing up with like a little polythene packet of pennies at a post office, you know, trying to turn it into cash.

Speaker 2 And then the face of the postal office worker is usually disgust when they see a large pile of pennies.

Speaker 2 It's never,

Speaker 2 the romance of the penny is sort of dwindled over the years. I read an article that in Britain, they tried to get rid of the pence.

Speaker 3 They tried that one day in America too, January 6th, 2021.

Speaker 2 I think both succeeded.

Speaker 3 Well, you don't see our as much anymore, but they didn't quite do what they were trying for.

Speaker 2 So I think the pence is still in circulation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Yeah, we have the 1P and the 2P,

Speaker 1 still

Speaker 1 in circulation. I mean, I think the problem in America was that the one-cent coin have Abraham Lincoln's face on.
And there are concerns that the face is looking increasingly reproachful

Speaker 1 as America evolves. And soon these coins may just melt themselves in disgust at

Speaker 1 what has happened to the country that

Speaker 1 Lincoln once presidented over.

Speaker 3 It's kind of a Dory and Gray portrait of civil rights on on every penny $5 bill.

Speaker 2 It's tragic that Abraham Lincoln

Speaker 2 didn't live long enough to find out that he looks like any craft beer maker in any major city in the world.

Speaker 1 That is the worst part about how Abraham Lincoln died.

Speaker 1 Before we move on, some one-cent coin facts.

Speaker 1 If all the one-cent coins in America, of which there are apparently 300 billion, were melted down and made into a statue of Thomas Jefferson, his balls would be worth in excess of $100,000 each.

Speaker 1 If all of those coins were stacked on top of each other but balanced on the thin edge, they would reach to the moon and back seven times or go 20 million times around a studio in Texas.

Speaker 1 But in all likelihood, they would topple over, causing a coin flood that could cover an area much, much smaller than the size of Manhattan in a 15-meter-deep tsunami of coin.

Speaker 1 If you tossed all three billion penny coins simultaneously, the rotating of those coins would, like the flapping of a 300 billion butterfly's wings, spark a chain of events that would eventually lead to the Vatican City winning the Women's Football World Cup within 4,000 years.

Speaker 1 However, the hum of 300 billion simultossed coins would create a sonic force field that would blast the sun out of the solar system, meaning that all women's World Cups in the early seventh millennium would be played in total darkness on an uninhabitable planet onto which players would have to be flown in on special aircraft to take part wearing luminous boots.

Speaker 2 Andy, did you just research this when you broke your piggy bank and saw what you could do with

Speaker 1 the coins you had from American troops?

Speaker 1 I have to break the piggy bank

Speaker 1 because it's not kosher until you've broken it. I think that's

Speaker 1 a bit rusty. Right, let's pick another story out.

Speaker 1 It's story number seven: Russian robot falls on its face.

Speaker 1 Russia traditionally has,

Speaker 1 well, quite often struggled to do things right the first time. Exhibit one, communism.
Exhibit two, democracy. It's also often struggled second, third, and fourth time.

Speaker 1 So it was no great surprise that a Russian humanoid robot being unveiled amidst much fanfare

Speaker 1 just fell over, possibly drunk,

Speaker 1 which did not really show that Russia is right at the cutting edge of technology in this

Speaker 1 competitive world.

Speaker 1 Josh,

Speaker 1 what did you, I mean,

Speaker 1 was this robot

Speaker 1 satirizing Russian history and politics?

Speaker 3 This is tricky. This is a tough situation because on one hand, it is not, it's a little, you know, it's sad to see the speed of technology slowing down.

Speaker 3 If your robot, which they said the organizers blame the mishap on calibration and lighting issues. And if your robot is falling over because it's too dark, that's a bad robot.

Speaker 3 I've worked in comedy clubs for two decades. Every comedy club waiter in history can navigate in the dark.

Speaker 3 So your robot should at least be able to get on the level of what humans have been doing for, I think, centuries. That's how long we've had comedy clubs.

Speaker 3 We just shouldn't be unveiling new humanoid technologies until they're more effective than me stumbling into bed drunk after my wife has already gone to sleep.

Speaker 3 But on the other hand, it is a little comforting to know that if these robots try to rise up against us, we can just flick a lamp on and off and they'll be helpless against their superior military tactics.

Speaker 3 Because like nothing makes me fear robots less than every, especially the humanoid robots that I've been promised are going to be the future.

Speaker 3 Every single one is like a bumbling mess that C-3PO would call a dumbass and then make a joke about it not threatening his own job security.

Speaker 2 One of the scientists

Speaker 2 were asked, you know, what's the worst thing about this? And they said, the really frightening thing is not the falling, but that it did not get back up, which is how I live my life.

Speaker 3 It didn't obey the Chumbawamba theory of robotics, which is when you get down, you must, in fact, get back up again.

Speaker 1 They're never going to keep you down. I get knocked down.
I think, all right, I'll have a snooze.

Speaker 1 Wouldn't have probably been quite such a

Speaker 1 successful song. In terms of the calibration and lighting issues,

Speaker 1 I've blamed a lot of struggles at comedy gigs on those in my time.

Speaker 2 One interesting fact, which is that the largest technology companies have spent five to ten billion dollars just in this last year to get humanoids into homes and businesses.

Speaker 2 So, apparently, lots of large companies

Speaker 2 in their lobbies, you have humanoid greeters apparently, in advertising agencies in Manhattan and so on.

Speaker 2 I personally don't have a humanoid greeter, but I was wondering if any of you gentlemen have one for guests and so on.

Speaker 1 Not as yet.

Speaker 1 But I mean, now you mention it,

Speaker 1 that would, I mean, to be honest, most of my life is spent in the shed. So anything that further reduces my contact with actual other humans, I think I should be slightly wary of.

Speaker 1 I mean, why so many robots are humanoids? Do you think if you're developing a robot to make life better, why would you base it on the world's stupidest f ⁇ ing species?

Speaker 1 One of the most physically inept species there is on the entire planet. Well, we get excited when we can move in the mid-20s miles an hour compared with so many others.

Speaker 1 I mean, if you really wanted to base robots on an existing species, I don't think humans should be in the top hundred. I mean, cockroaches,

Speaker 1 you'd go with,

Speaker 1 you want some sort of apex predator, you know, shark, maybe, virus, but but humans, no, I just think we are wasting our time with our inefficient arms and legs.

Speaker 3 We're doing humanoid robots.

Speaker 3 I think we should do platypusoid robots just because the platypus is already so visually stunning and impressive and then theoretically impressive that you get a lot of juice out of just like, whoa, what the hell is that thing?

Speaker 3 Even before you robotify it.

Speaker 1 That could make Australia the power brokers in the technological world. That's a

Speaker 3 kind of a dark horse candidate.

Speaker 2 I'd love to see the BBC documentary where they make a robot lion and Sir David Atmar just releases it among real lions.

Speaker 3 And then I like, I hope he does does the same thing of like, oh, I can't interrupt. Like, you put that there.

Speaker 1 Well, they did do a series where they had sort of fake animals that looked quite realistic,

Speaker 1 other than the fact that they were obviously fake, in amongst other animals. And they, and so they'd, you know, have like meerkats that would move their heads in a kind of

Speaker 1 meerkat sort of way. But I think, you know, the next phase is, you know, to have a

Speaker 1 robot lion in amongst all the other lions, but one that can actually savagely bring down and disembowel a wildebeest.

Speaker 1 And then I think, you know, you'd have that true trust between the subject of the documentary and the robots involved.

Speaker 3 Because right now, the animals aren't, you know, they lack kind of the strength and motivation that's mostly good for pranks, it sounds like pranks on other animals, which is why

Speaker 3 the famous rodent robot nature show, prank show, Ashton Kutcher's Skunked, was so successful.

Speaker 1 That's a long walk, but we got there.

Speaker 2 The difficulty is these large language models that these companies are building, they just can't read lion as yet. That's the problem.

Speaker 2 It's still based on human language.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we needed an LLLM large lion language model.

Speaker 3 Cat GPT.

Speaker 1 That's definitely the future.

Speaker 1 That's not the future. That was worth the walk.
That was really good.

Speaker 1 The other one, not so much. No, the other one also, but not as much.

Speaker 1 Right, time for our next story.

Speaker 1 Oh, dear.

Speaker 1 It's story number one. Trump news now.
I was hoping that wouldn't come out of the bag.

Speaker 1 Well, it's been another busy week for Trump.

Speaker 1 He's threatened a $5 billion lawsuit against the BBC, and he is in full verbal warfare with Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was previously almost more Trump than Trump himself.

Speaker 1 And this is around the Epstein files. And when Marjorie Taylor Greene is questioning your morals and decision-making,

Speaker 1 even the most armor-plated brain must surely start to think, maybe I'm a bit of a.

Speaker 1 But look,

Speaker 1 I guess, you know, politics doesn't always work the way you expect it to. Trump told reporters that Marjorie Taylor Greene had, quotes, lost her way.
And I don't think anyone would dispute that.

Speaker 1 It's just a question of when she lost it. Was it recently when she's turned against Trump or pretty much as she emerged from the womb?

Speaker 1 He called

Speaker 1 Green wacky and not in a fun, quirky, surreal, prop-based comedian kind of way.

Speaker 1 And he also dubbed her a traitor, which is pretty much a classic example of the kettle calling the other kettle a kettle.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I mean it's just it's interesting the way that this and the latest on on the sort of Epstein story is that Trump has changed his mind and is now backing releasing all the Epstein files. Josh,

Speaker 1 what on earth is going on?

Speaker 3 It is really wild over here. It has consumed the news.

Speaker 3 The House Oversight. So let's back up just a little bit.
Because last week, the House Oversight Committee released a batch of emails related to Jeffrey Epstein's various crimes.

Speaker 3 And I guess that's the wrong word. It's not various crimes.
It's like the same crime a lot.

Speaker 3 The same horrible crime a lot. And the emails seem to implicate a lot of rich and powerful Americans, right? And it's weird to see,

Speaker 3 it's always weird when you anything related to Jeffrey Epstein that all these rich, powerful people who could do anything in the world, they wanted to hang out with a child sex trafficker.

Speaker 3 There are so many more fun criminals to hang out with. Drug lords, guys who import illegal snakes, souped up jet ski engineers.
And I bet you can meet those all in one guy.

Speaker 3 There's one guy that does that all.

Speaker 3 This is, and Andy, to circle back on what you're saying,

Speaker 3 although he lacked any moral compass or set of grammatical rules, as you can see from these emails that were released, it's kind of staggering

Speaker 3 how available Jeffrey Epstein was as a friend while running a ruthless and despicable sex trafficking ring. Like he was just emailing constantly with seemingly anyone who would reach out to him.

Speaker 3 And it makes me feel bad for how long it takes my friends to answer texts sometimes. And they're all just comedians and freelance writers.

Speaker 3 So Trump, of course, is mentioned many times in the emails in unflattering ways. Jeffrey Epstein calls him gross, I believe, and says all sorts of terrible things about him.

Speaker 3 And that's kind of, this is weird. This is what I wanted to get to.

Speaker 3 It's weird when a notorious pedophile talks shit about you, because I don't know if that means, wow, you're worse than this guy, or if it's like a two negatives make a positive thing.

Speaker 3 Like it would be arguably worse if Jeffrey Epsom was like, Trump, my man, two peas in a pod. We have exactly the same sense of how the world should work.

Speaker 3 But I guess a sex trafficker hanging out with you enough that he emails other people about you is bad either way.

Speaker 1 Yes, it doesn't, it's not great.

Speaker 1 I mean, it has led to, I think, what might be the headline that most encapsulates the state of the third millennium so far and the state of humanity at this critical phase when really as a species we're contemplating whether and when to outsource our entire existence to technology to see if it can do a better job and this is in the daily telegraph today this is the headline trump quotes did not perform sex act on bill clinton close quotes insists epstein's brother and i mean this there's a lot to unpack

Speaker 1 there's a lot to unpack from that, but I'm not sure there could be a headline that more shows where we are in late 2025 as a civilize, as civilizations, as a species, than Trump did not perform sex act on Bill Clinton insists Epstein's brother.

Speaker 1 That basically just summarizes the entire history of human evolution that has brought us to the 17th of November 2025.

Speaker 2 Andy, I didn't read today's Telegraph, but is that just a list of all the people in history that haven't performed a sex act?

Speaker 1 Chengis Khan, is he in there? Yeah, still more than 99% of people in human history have not performed a sex act on Bill Clinton.

Speaker 2 The other thing I've really enjoyed through this whole process is the discourse between

Speaker 2 President Trump and Marjorie Taylor Green, former allies. There's been a lot of name-calling.
Marjorie Taylor Green herself has been quite brilliant with the British press in particular.

Speaker 2 I think it was Sky News that asked her something about David Cameron and she replied, David Cameron can kiss my ass.

Speaker 2 And she was asked about Britain and she said, your whole island is on fire.

Speaker 2 So, you know, she's a measured politician, but lately she's been calling Trump an old lunatic and he's been calling her a raging lunatic.

Speaker 2 So I guess when all friendships end

Speaker 2 and it has to go to the press, it's just a question of two mad people calling each other mad.

Speaker 1 That's as old as time itself.

Speaker 3 Again, this is tricky, right, to hear her speaking ill of Trump because it's like

Speaker 3 people are giving her a lot of credit for going against Trump. And that to me, it's like, I don't think she deserves much credit.

Speaker 3 Like hearing the kind of liberal turn towards like, ooh, maybe she's an ally makes me want to blow my brains out with a Jewish space laser.

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 3 sometimes the enemy of my enemy is my friend and sometimes the enemy of my enemy is still enemy the enemy of queer people and immigrants and good taste and democracy so I just don't think she I think she's got a lot of showing and proving to do before anyone hail welcomes her to the resistance as it were In terms of the

Speaker 1 case against

Speaker 1 the BBC, which relates to the edit of the panorama show that we talked about in last week's uh show he's threatened a five billion dollar court case will that court case win doesn't really matter for trump losing court cases to him is basically just part of the weekly rhythm of adult life like for normal people sort of like changing trousers or thinking about joining a motorcycle pyramid troop but deciding not to or ordering a salad and vowing to eat more salads it's just part of the everyday fabric of life legally He probably doesn't have a leg to stand on, not even someone else's leg,

Speaker 1 because the program is not broadcast in in the USA.

Speaker 1 So it's possible that the BBC and a kind of damage limitation exercise could reach a compromise whereby the BBC doctors more footage of historic events to show Donald Trump at the heart of it.

Speaker 1 Maybe the moon landings in 1969 could show Trump just elbowing Neil Armstrong out of the way, saying, this is my gig. Maybe Trump beating Usain Bolt in the Beijing Olympic 100-meter final.

Speaker 1 Trump marrying Princess Diana,

Speaker 1 which would basically just be

Speaker 1 dragging something out of the deepest recesses of

Speaker 1 his brain.

Speaker 1 Trump in the D-Day landings, bravely hobbling across Omaha Beach despite a hurty ankle.

Speaker 1 Just shake hands and pat the Nazis on the back.

Speaker 1 Whatever butters his

Speaker 1 ego toast.

Speaker 1 But I mean, $5 billion, that's quite a lot for the BBC.

Speaker 1 That's the cost of 60 years worth of Radio 4 programming, or Pro Rata.

Speaker 1 40,000 years of just the news quiz, the show which

Speaker 1 I host, which for the fifth consecutive year has won the prestigious Bugle Award for best BBC Radio Topical Comedy Panel quiz show.

Speaker 1 So I have a vested interest in this court case not costing the BBC $5 billion.

Speaker 1 But, yeah, I mean, the BBC is clearly worried because he is a litigious man, which is a specific category in human evolution, litigious man,

Speaker 1 a phase of evolution we could have done with skipping. When they find the remains of a litigious man in a peat bog in thousands of years' time, what will they make of it?

Speaker 1 They'll examine the contents of its stomach and find that it lived on a diet of pure bile.

Speaker 1 They will conclude that it had overdeveloped muscles in its forehead from frowning and looking furious, that it died alone, wrapped in a cloak of its own self-regarding futility, surrounded by affidavits and lawyers' bills, to carry into the afterlife to sue the gods.

Speaker 1 It's not a part of human history we should be proud of.

Speaker 1 Well, that brings us to the end of this week's bugle. Bad luck to all the stories that were not drawn out of the hat.

Speaker 1 They will no doubt

Speaker 1 find a time in a future episode. Our next episode will be coming from the Bugle Live Show in Brisbane on the 2nd of December, featuring the wonderful Alice Fraser.
We will have a sub-episode for you

Speaker 1 in between this episode and the next one.

Speaker 1 Having already plugged my shows, I can't do a full re-plug. Anyway, all the details on my website, and isultaman.co.uk.

Speaker 1 If you want to be a hero to all humanity, either dress up like something you're not and go to a remembrance service, or join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme to help keep our show free, flourishing, and independent.

Speaker 1 Details at thebuglepodcast.com. Anuvab, what have you got to plug?

Speaker 2 I will be back in London and the 31st of January doing a show at Soho Theatre Walthamstow

Speaker 2 for Medicine Saint-Frontier. They're doing a big event raising money

Speaker 2 and the event is called Comedy Saint-Frontière in partnership with McPerrin. I haven't done anything with battle

Speaker 2 and I haven't been to any wars.

Speaker 2 I have crossed borders in a very meek manner. And I feel like people who do good work, like save lives across borders, deserve at least some comedy, which I probably won't be able to provide.

Speaker 2 There'll be others for that, but they also have me there.

Speaker 2 It's January 31st at Seoul Theatre Walthamstone.

Speaker 1 Josh,

Speaker 3 no charitable endeavors on my end to announce.

Speaker 3 But I am on the road a whole bunch. This weekend, November 23rd, I'm in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the Parkway Theater.
I am then

Speaker 3 from the 28th of November to December 14th, I am on the road with Ted Leo and Amy Mann and Paul F. Tompkins and Ellie Mackay for Amy and Ted's Christmas Variety Show.

Speaker 3 December 28th, this is a Sunday. I'm at the Crocodile in Seattle, the 30th and 31st, Helium in Portland.
And then

Speaker 3 January 17th, back at Sketchfest in San Francisco with my friend Alison Leiby for a Sup Bro show. All that.

Speaker 3 You can find out all the Josh Gondelman information you need at my newsletter, That's Marvelous. That's marvelousnewsletter.com or just my website, joshgondelman.com.
Sorry for the many plugs.

Speaker 3 Buglers are always so lovely about turning out for shows. And so if they want to come, you should come.
That's all the information I have about me.

Speaker 1 And if you want to listen to the cricket i will be on the the pbc's uh radio commentary available via bbc sounds um i think it's probably available outside of the uk but i'm but i'm sure you can find it uh where i will be bringing nothing but pure unadulterated fact mostly um uh starting on friday uh until uh next week's sub-episode thank you for listening and goodbye