The Bugle - Checkmate

Episode Date: July 24, 2022

Andy is with Alice Fraser and Aditi Mittal to unpack everything behind the unbearable heat, superhuman chess and who's the new kid inside number 10.Our 15th Birthday Special Tour is coming to the UK a...nd Ireland this year: https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/liveThere's no ads in this show, thanks to you! Cast some cents and pennies our way: https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateThis episode was written and presented byAndy ZaltzmanAlice FraserAditi MittalAnd produced by Ross Ramsey-Golding Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Dancelaguard fans, you will be thrilled to know a book is coming out if you fund it via Unbound. We are publishing the Dancelaguard Reader by Alice Fraser and Dancelaguard, a glorious insight into the world of Dancelaguard, self-published romance maven, and online bestseller. If you would like to find out how to support it, go to thebugelpodcast.com. If we get enough support, we will publish the book. That's a real thing that's going to happen. Thebugelpodcast.com to support the Danciler Guard Reader. A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A- Audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello, Bugglers and welcome to issue 4,237 of the Bughal Audio newspaper for a visual world with me Andy Zoltzman coming to you from a hotel room in Manchester and as we're accured Britain is slowly re-conjealing after melting in record temperatures.
Starting point is 00:01:02 Earlier this week the Mercury getting its funk well and truly on, topping 40 degrees Celsius for the first time since we started measuring these things on a scale more complicated than the simple old kill something and where it's pelt, brackets cold, sit around in a hut thinking about Flint, brackets medium and build a hinge, f***ing hot.
Starting point is 00:01:21 So, so, regrettably, followed medical advice this week, I did have to postpone my experiment to see how many layers of ski clothing you can wear while still being able to break dance for four hours unbroken. But amazingly, and despite all the cynicism, our transport network was completely unaffected. Everything grounds a halt, just like on a normal day.
Starting point is 00:01:41 So, we managed to muddle our way through. Joining me today from London, it's Alice Fraser, hi Alice. Hi Andy, I did my back so I had to have a hot water bottle tucked down the back of my Andes and a sweaty baby on my front truly a nightmare time. But I have lots of tips if anyone wants them for dealing with the heat. And joining us from a place where I believe it's never hot at all, from, but it's currently quite wet, from Mumbai, it's a DT-Mitarl, hi, DT.
Starting point is 00:02:11 It is such an honor and pleasure to be on a Zoom call, talking to people where I'm the one saying, actually, the weather's quite nice here. It has never happened before, the smugness, I feel, honestly honestly will last me for the rest of this episode. It is the weather is quite nice actually we are in the middle of our monsoons. If anyone wants any tips on how to deal with heat, get in touch with Alice. I know nothing about it. We are recording on the 22nd of July, 2022.
Starting point is 00:02:46 It is National Sleep Awareness Week in America apparently and to mark the occasion, we're going to ask you, Bueglers, two simple questions. One, are you asleep? And two, are you still asleep? And Sunday, the 24th of July is National Tell an Old joke day. And to mark it on this week's bugle, we will be talking about the world's abject failure to come to terms of climate change and the Conservative Party imposing a new Prime Minister on the UK whilst using the nation as a plating in its own intonisseign power games. The old ones
Starting point is 00:03:18 are always the most depressing. As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. Now, this week, a special psychometric test. Could you be leader of the conservative party in the UK? Well, I'm going to put to you various questions. Your answers will tell you if you have the right psychological makeup to be the Tory leader. Question one, who is your favourite tennis player, a Roger Federer, b Serena Williams, c Fred Perry from the 1930s before the EU band is all from playing tennis. D. whichever of Andy Murray or Emma Raducani you remember first.
Starting point is 00:03:49 Or E. Margaret Thatcher. Question two. You find an injured bird on the ground outside of school. What do you do? A. Call a local bird welfare charity, a nurse, the strictened creature, until specialist help arrives. B. swiftly break the bird's neck to end it suffering as humanly as possible. See bite the birds head off then hurl its corpse into the school playground while saying, I won't give into the woke lobby who say you shouldn't throw dead birds at children. Or D, promise the bird that you will cut its taxes and everything will be magically okay again before feeding the bird to a passing Russian billionaire's feral dog while saying, hi sir guy, could you bang us another mill we're out of branded stationary?
Starting point is 00:04:28 And question three, you see an interestingly shaped cloud, what does it make you think of? A. Margaret Thatcher. B. The Falklands War. C. Nothing. It's just a cloud. D. The Class Struggle. Or E. Cricket.
Starting point is 00:04:41 Question four, arrange the following into a priority list with the thing that is most important to you at the top. A, yourself, B, rich people who give money to the Conservative Party, C, rich people who might give money to the Conservative Party in future, D, beating the Labour Party, D, the Conservative Party, or F, the United Kingdom. Oh, sorry, that was already arranged in Conservative Party priority order. Oh, my goodness, they ignore question four. That section in the bin. The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World's The World it. It's here to stay and it's not responding to our threats that we are really definitely going to do something about it within the next three decades or so.
Starting point is 00:05:28 In fact, this week, old Colonel Climent has been shitting on everyone's picnics yet again. Much of Europe, including the former part of Europe, the UK, has been baked like an extremely varied selection of regional pastries by temperatures well over 40 degrees Celsius, sparking lethal wildfires, a health emergency, and in Britain, people complaining about the government warning people to be careful. Around 100 million people in America are living under heat alerts, the whole of Oklahoma tops 103 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday. Meteorologists have warned people
Starting point is 00:05:58 to look out for symptoms including headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue, which could be signs of heat-induced illness or of having watched one of the Conservative Party leadership debates. We don't know. How do you both see the current state of the world in terms of heroic progress towards self-inflicted armageddon? I'm fascinated by this Biden announcement where he's announced $2.3 billion American dollars worth of infrastructure help. Building infrastructure help, let's be specific.
Starting point is 00:06:27 Also, $2.3 billion American dollars is 1.9 billion British pounds, but I'm not sure if it's the difference between the dollar and the pound or the difference between British billions and American billions. I think we've all agreed on American billions, mainly because they have more of them. But anyway, building infrastructure with stand extreme weather is simultaneously like obviously a clever move for a country wallowing in deeply decrepit public systems and a weird fear of paying taxes that might ever help anyone else. You know, oh no, what if we paved this road that's made out of lava and spikes and then
Starting point is 00:06:57 one day a pedophile drives down it. I don't want a pido driving down my harder and tax dollars. I don't know. To be fair, I would be pissed if I were to be paying tax in America as well as sort of a chicken and the egg situation. People very reasonably alike, why would I pay my taxes to a country that's never done anything nice for me when I'm already $100,000 in debt for my college degree in Excel spreadsheet management?
Starting point is 00:07:18 It's like a chicken and egg situation, but both the chicken and the egg are trying to kill each other. Returning to the point, Joe Biden stopped short of formally declaring a climate emergency, though he did say it was a climate emergency, but he didn't declare it a climate emergency. He just said it was a climate emergency, because if he declared that it was a climate emergency, it would grant him more power to deal with the climate emergency. And the last thing he wants is the capacity to an actual change. I mean Biden did not want to declare it a climate emergency which is okay but does the
Starting point is 00:07:53 climate know? Because at this point, you cannot gas light the climate into thinking that it's not an emergency because both gas and light are, you know, gifts given to us by the environment. So it's a little bit worrying that, you know, he doesn't want to declare it a climate emergency. And I just want to say I resent the bugle for multiple reasons. But the one that I do the most is that this is probably the third time that I have had to look up Joe Manchin which who is some dude who apparently you know in the states he owns a bunch of coal plants coal mines- Oh, it's a coal plant if you leave them for long enough, I'm sure, not fresh out. Yeah, yeah, I mean, honestly, is he an environmentalist really if you think about it?
Starting point is 00:08:54 He, you know, and so he owns a bunch of coal things and he is sort of one of the major reasons why the Democrats and Republicans are having a problem coming to any sort of combined consensus on what they want to do about the climate. And here's my thing, like he will probably be on Mars by the time the planet explodes. I think that, you know, I do think they say that, you know, it's better to know when to arrive somewhere, but it's even better to know when to leave. And I think that at this point humanity should just pack up. I think that instead of these petty arguments with each other, you know, getting offended
Starting point is 00:09:35 when someone gives you heat tips. F*** it. You know, because you are a crab in the port of boiling water. I say you just take in a margarita and enjoy the end of the world while Joe Manchin flies off to Mars. So fundamentally it seems America which you know is one of the more important nations when it comes to dealing with climate change in terms of both the vast scale of its emissions and the influence it has around the world is kind of stuck. But the greater problem, surely Alice Aditi, is that one of the great failings of Charles Darwin when he invented evolution to try and move our species on a bit in the 19th century was not
Starting point is 00:10:16 including a facility to enable us to adapt to increasing temperatures. I mean, it was easy for him because he could just shave off his beard or take off his extremely 19th century hats and the eight layers of clothing that would do a go at the time in case anyone even contemplated the existence of human flesh and made God very cross indeed. He was particularly rassable in the 1800s God. So we're stuck. We're stuck with the these bodies that just aren't really adapted to live in what will presumably soon be 80 degree heat. I mean, Alice, you've lived in Australia for most of your life. And it's quite hot there.
Starting point is 00:10:54 I've been reliably informed by myself, remembering myself melting in the streets of Adelaide a few months ago. Any tips for the world from there? OK, I will tell you, I will tell you first how I have dealt with it and then I'll give you some tips from our sister podcast Nagargal. First of all, I misted my baby with a spray bottle like the perfect fat little succulent that she is. I drank an metric ton of bubble tea.
Starting point is 00:11:18 I cursed the architecture of the British which seems to be mainly geared towards feelings slightly cramped and reassuringly trapped like you're inside the hull of a ship. And I feel that a dozen smug weird jokes about like, well aren't you Australian? Surely 40 degrees is fine for you. And you know what? No, 40 degrees is fine, baby. When you're inside a building with even a fragment of ventilation or proper insulation or air conditioning or high ceilings or shade, it is not fine when you're living in a literal pizza oven. 40 degrees is fine when you can go sit in the shade or near a beach where people will be using, you know, responsible levels of sun protection, not ripping the shells off their fluorescently pale underbellies and charging directly into the heart of the sun at midday. I'm really an article in the Guardian about Britain's total, not just failure, but refusal to build buildings that even contemplates the concept of temperature.
Starting point is 00:12:12 So we haven't seen it. Our housing stock is generally rooms that are pretty small and pokey, often damp, that are unbelievably cold in the winter and unbelievably hot in the summer. Despite the fact that neither are winters nor are summers are particularly cold or hot, respectively, on a global scale. It's almost like, you know, we will just act, design life. Maybe it's so that we can understand what it's like in other parts of the world, where you do have these extreme temperatures more often.
Starting point is 00:12:43 Maybe it was part of our training for when we took temporary charge of some of these places that we used to living in these strange climbs through having inflicted them on ourselves through shit-bladding. The number one solution to dealing with hot weather is to be rich. You're just so clean. So clean. So rich. You just go in the place, you're welcome. You're welcome. You know, honestly just get into an air conditioned room. And again, like I mean, I was talking about the smugness,
Starting point is 00:13:14 you know, from the time that I said hello, and that is carrying on right now. Because it's so cute when you're like, oh my god, there's a heat wave. It's 27 degrees. I was like, that's the temperature our air conditioners are set up. I'll be speaking of tips. Yes, what are your heat tips for buglers?
Starting point is 00:13:35 Here are my heat tips brought to you by regular gargle sponsor, half a glass of water. Give a half a glass of water to a limp stranger. Make ice, put it in your bum crack, dip your bits into it. Use it to inflate one of those squinched-up novelty sponge toys, and then put it on your head like a little hat. Saturate a cloth and place it in front of a fan to blow wet air through the room. Use it to sabotage the computers of the largest oil companies in the world, not immediately effective, but long-term.
Starting point is 00:14:00 It's good. Dress as a way to put poison in it and give it to someone at the beginning of a murder mystery to start yourself sweating. Or fire it's good. Dress is a way to put poison in it and give it to someone at the beginning of a murder mystery to start yourself sweating or fire it into space. So one day an indentured servant working on Elon Musk's Mars Mining Satellite will have enough to trade for his freedom. And those are your half of us water tips
Starting point is 00:14:15 for dealing with a heat wave. So I mean, so you understand, perhaps, Britain not legislating for the fact that we'd have temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius. But also, let's not forget, we have a great national tradition of doing our infrastructures to absolute bare minimum standards. Exhibit one, stone hinge, which is a very bad precedent
Starting point is 00:14:34 for today's railways, buildings, and other things that have been struggling in the heat this week. So, you know, they put it up and people said, you sure that's done. And, you know, the builder said, oh, I don't give a shit if it only works once a year It doesn't have a roof and it gets in the way the a303 it's up isn't it? We have got it done the British way Even a broken hinge is right once a year Andy
Starting point is 00:14:59 Indian news now and well more excitement in the the world of Indian press freedom or lack of it DT this week, perhaps you can bring us up to date. I am so absolutely thrilled to be one of the last voices that has not been in jail yet for speaking my mind. You know they say that truth is the first casualty to war but that sentence was written after everyone who told the truth was either murdered or jailed because about 21 days ago we had Muhammad Zubair, one of the co-founders of the news portal, Alt News, which has been fact checking Indian News, who was arrested for under completely spurious charges. He was taken into custody for a tweet where he posted a clip of a Hindi movie from 1973,
Starting point is 00:15:50 the report that was filed against him for a hurting Hindu sentiments was filed by an anonymous Twitter account that tweeted that one tweet about being offended and now does not exist. To argue the semantics of his tweet, you know, like it was like this, it was like that, it's pointless because it does not matter. Is it calling out the government and is the person's name Muslim or even Muslim sounding? You know, like I, for example, as other theme it all have been referred to as Adil Muhammad
Starting point is 00:16:26 whenever I tweet anything against the government irrespective of my gender and Muhammad's affair is lucky he has been released because he is a high profile critic of the government which means that the only way to criticize the government right now is loudly so if anyone has any problems go for it. In the meantime, in the meantime we have, and I would like to mention their names, Umar Khaled who's been in jail for 671 days, Sadiqaupan 635 days, Asif Sultan 1427 days, Fahad Shah 168 days, Khalid Sefi, 743 days, Gulfi Shah Fatima, 832 days, Shahjeeel Isman, 931 days, and Sahaja Ghul for 191 days. And the international press covered Zubair's case extensively because it was concerned
Starting point is 00:17:20 about the chilling effect it might have on press freedom and let me reassure you at this point while Europe goes through a heat wave we are frozen. It has chilled us enough that we are now just every time that the government that the Supreme Court does something that's normal we celebrate. So yeah you just found out of this fact checking website out news. And I mean, there's no type of website politicians like less than a fact checking website, because life would be so much simpler for them if what they said were facts was simply accepted as facts, like in the good old days. And, you know, I mean, press freedom comes in in many forms. I mean,
Starting point is 00:18:05 here in Britain, our take on press freedom is the freedom for our press not to hold the government to account if it doesn't want to. And the freedom to lie, propagandize and share pictures of famous women walking out of a place whilst wearing a thing whilst also being entirely free from responsibility or consequence what they publish. So it's just different ways of looking at the concept of press freedom. I look at just think that we're looking at the concept of press freedom really. And look, I just think that we're all missing the reality of the situation, which is that the principle of the importance of press freedom was established at a time when mostly only
Starting point is 00:18:34 rich people could read. So, let's be realistic here about what they were agreeing to when they agreed to this whole idea in the first place. Also, Sonja Gandhi, the president of the Opposition Congress Party, is under investigation by the enforcement directorate, which sounds like something from a film, but isn't. Over a decade-old, an unproven allegation of money laundering, Opposition Party leaders have issued a joint statement condemning the investigation and said that Modi's government had, quote, unleashed a relentless campaign against its opponents and critics through the misuse of investigative
Starting point is 00:19:13 agencies, mischievous. Now amongst our many and varied legacies to India, Aditi, it is a source of great delight and pride here in Britain to see that classic British understatement and euphemism is still going very, very strong indeed. In other exciting news, in India, India will soon, once again, be home to wild cheaters. The sub claim fastest land mammals on earth are imminently to arrive in India and the Kuno National Park. Now amongst all the things on India shopping list as a nation of DT, it may be a bit more
Starting point is 00:19:47 space, a bit less honking of horns every now and again, maybe, a bit less of a despoity government, a medical cure for corruption, a few more Olympic gold medals, and a magic spell to resurrect Villa Veracoli's batting. You might not have thought someone would be thinking, we need more carnivorous big cats that can run at 70 miles an hour. But that is what India is getting. You must be very excited. I am absolutely thrilled because I mean this coincides with India's 75th year as an independent nation. We sort of murdered all the local cheetahs and now we sort of,
Starting point is 00:20:25 but in 1952, we were kind of done with them. And then now we Indians are known for many things. You know, our diversity, our love for spices, and of course, our inherent in built racism. So one of the things that I am very excited about is to see how these Namibian cheetahs will be treated by the local Cheetah population. Will there be inter-cheetah racism?
Starting point is 00:20:53 I think that's something that we have to watch out for at this point. And as I said, this is a gift on India's 75th independent year. And I mean, this is like giving a cat to your grandparents. And I'm hoping that they're going to take care of it. So I think we are very excited. And we've seen that introducing an apex predator into an environment where it has not been for several decades, where the ecosystem has possibly adjusted itself in order to accommodate other predators has never ended badly. It has never ended badly. We've all seen the Jurassic Park movies and
Starting point is 00:21:37 those are just feel good family films where everything goes well. So a deal has been struck to sign these cheaters from Namibia, a big money, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, um, um, Pupendi Adaf, the Environment Minister for India, so, so, so, heralded the return of cheaters with these words, completing 75 glorious years of independence with restoring the fastest terrestrial flagship species, the cheater in India, will rekindle the ecological dynamics of the landscape. Where is that? What is a flagship? What is a flagship?
Starting point is 00:22:29 I mean, a flagship shop is where they put a shop in some way that it's too expensive, it doesn't make any money, but it looks good. So I think that there's just a lot of cheaters. I just got that. I just got that. See even you know that's what self-awareness, five points for self-awareness to our environment minister. You know what they're not dying enough and fast enough in Namibia. Come over. We'll kill you here. Experts said that the National Park is
Starting point is 00:23:00 quote, not the best Cheetah landscape at a piddling 1,400 square kilometers as cheetahs not only like to eat carpaccio as often as possible, but also to have a solid 3,000 square kilometers to prance around in their knockoff leppets in place. But then, you know, there's not enough space around the world, the other world doesn't have the space it used to, so maybe it's old Stevie Spotty legs in need to change. Britain's new Prime Minister news now, and while the shortlist shit fest to impose a new Prime Minister on the UK is down to the final two, and the Tories have whittled down their not entirely impressive list of candidates, to Liz Truss, the foreign secretary,
Starting point is 00:23:46 a substandard bearer for those who parade their inadequacies proudly. A shape-shifting former Liberal Democrat, former remains important, our Brexitatious Thatcher tribute act. And Rishi Sunak, former Chancellor Dexter, former hedge fund casinoist with a poncho for nauseating videos of himself. The former Chancellor Dexter, who presided over some of the most spectacularly wasteful spending in British government history and amidst a bumbling
Starting point is 00:24:09 growth for resistant economy, he exuded as much empathy for the less fortunate as Boris Johnson exudes respect for the Ten Commandments. So that's what we've got, those are the two choices. As neutral external observers, what do you make of the fact that one of these two will soon be in charge in Britain? I mean, I think it's wonderful. I think that it's such a representation. Like such a win for representation. Representation matters Andy. And the fact that, you know, the Tory leadership is now absolutely certain to be held by either a woman or a man of color depending on who vomits on themselves first. I think it's a really beautiful thing that the Tories are willing to be in the front lines of the culture war about who's allowed to have a c***** but they're pretty equal opportunity that who's allowed to be a c***** and you know the thing about minorities in like oppressive institutions that generally discriminate against them is that you have to be better like you have to be better
Starting point is 00:25:04 if you're a female comedian you have to be better. Like you have to be better. If you're a female comedian, you have to be better than your colleague. You have to be, and if you're a female Tory, you've got to be, I mean, you've got to be that child. Like you've got to be worse than everyone else at the politics side of things. So I think it's a really exciting time for the Tories. You know, I, I'm me, this is my dear controversial opinion, but, Indian men are going to hate me more than they already do for this. But is Rishi Sonarka better a gold digger? Like he just married into wealth this guy.
Starting point is 00:25:36 And like if you look at him, in fact, you know, I Rishi Sonark's face, which is like this, you know, it looks like a late-season mango. It's like unrealistically long. The space sort of between his eyes and his lips is like two small early-season mangoes. That's how long his face is. And he looks like the classic prototype Punjabi guy who sort of like marries up and then keeps failing up. And that's why, you know, Alice made that point for a representation because it's so important because in India, someone like Rishi Sunak were probably at max in life, make it to like middle management, like sucking like Ambani's or Ardani's dick, right?
Starting point is 00:26:24 But, you know, in the UK, he's, you know, out there, he is almost like sort of like at the top most level and all he has to do is suck a couple of conservative party members' dicks. Trust is an issue, she was a liberal Democrat member. When young, she made a speech at the liberal Democrat conference, I think she was still a teenager. But it's not all so fun. She has a learn to make speeches any better.
Starting point is 00:26:50 She is almost, every time she speaks in public, it could be used as an object lesson in anti-oratory. You could just show it to children. This is how not to communicate. Chest news now and chest, a game that has fascinated humanity for what is it now? Coming on to a thousand years, is boring. I don't take it from me, take it from Magnus Carlson, one of the foremost geniuses of the 64-square stratagetium that is the game of chest. He's announced that he quotes, cannot be asked to defend his World Championship title next year, not his words out loud, but certainly what he really meant when he said that he had no inclination to play.
Starting point is 00:27:34 He had been scheduled for a showdown in 2023 with the Russian Grandmaster Jan Nebomniachi, who's going to have to chess the shit out of it against someone else instead. And it just, that's it. He's got no inclination to play. So, I mean, what does this tell us about the state of humanity now, that one of the greatest chess players ever can't be asked to play chess? Well, first of all, Andy, he's not, it's not all of chess that he's giving up, it's just these world championship bouts, which are apparently extremely grueling and unpleasant, and he's still gonna play chess for fun. He's not just working up one day and going, I've forgotten which one of the horses. He's decided that he's, you know, he's going out on top.
Starting point is 00:28:15 He's like, no, I think this is a wonderful thing. I think normalised quitting shit you don't enjoy. You don't have to keep doing things just because you happen to be the best in the world at them, Andy. Oh! You could stop doing puns one day. Oh, right. Yeah. Well, never thought of it like that. Yeah. It's a curse as much as a gift.
Starting point is 00:28:31 I think it's a great thing. I think leave room for the young ones to come up, you know, and to keep doing the chessing that they love so much. Which I, you know, let, let, let, I think you need room for the, for the game to evolve and become more interesting. Apparently, the institution is taking the note and they've decided room for the game to evolve and become more interesting. Apparently, the institution is taking the note and they've decided they're not going to make these world championship matches so grueling after all. They're just going to make them psychologically stressful by having your mum with Sprinierier about how disappointed she is about the movie made. No longer going to last days and days and days. They're going to do it on a timer and if you go too long they'll put an electric shock up here. They've tried that in cricket, it doesn't work, it just doesn't work.
Starting point is 00:29:09 And they're going to, they're going to sub out one of the games, one of the five games just for a straight up match of thumb wars. So I think all of this is an exciting future for the game of chess and I, for one, look forward to paying too much money to watch it. Well, the Carlson of course is best known for things like moving pawns, saying no God boy, you can't go that way, my friend, it's diagonal to nothing. And also for not having any friends from Prague just because he can't face everyone making the same pun about it. And there's also talk that the Norwegian chess federation was rebuffed in its efforts to allow Carlson to have a single Viking berserker born that could charge out six squares in the first move of the game and take out
Starting point is 00:29:52 three enemy pieces. I just think we should be clear that the king of chess is only taking one step away from the game. I am so excited because I don't play chess. I neither do I possess the intellect of someone who understands it and I'll be honest before this story I thought Magnus Carlson was a type of beer. But it sounds like the name of like a 4.5% alcohol level beer. You know, at this point I am just thrilled because I finally have something in common with A.C.S. Grandmaster. And that is that I don't want to do shit. I just could not be asked. And I mean like, yeah, the guys like, like oh the last match that apparently they
Starting point is 00:30:45 played this championship was an eight hour match. I'm like what is the point of following your passion if you're going to end up doing a nine to five anyway. So I support the decision by Magnus Carlson and I do believe Alice is very right in her analysis. Exciting times for Chess in India, Aditi, the 44th Chess Olympiad is coming to India to Mamala Puram, south of the coastal motorbless of Chennai next week, but there have been complaints about the price of tickets.
Starting point is 00:31:19 Tickets to watch live have been priced at 3000 rupees, which is around 30 pounds or almost 40 dollars for Indian men. 8,000 rupees for foreigners, that's about 100 US dollars, but only 300 rupees for women. How come women around the world get all the breaks? I mean, this is hugely unfair, isn't it? Yes, I agree with you. I agree with you, especially with the glut of women in chess.
Starting point is 00:31:45 We should definitely be pricing it up. In fact, I was my attitude towards this. It was going to be more like, yeah, pay the money. If you have to go, how much are you going to see live anyway? If the whole board is about to speak, okay, the size of my torso. And then you're going to sit in a giant friggin' room and look at, you know what, go home, watch the streaming of the thing, okay. No chest player wants you to be like, yeah, go for it. Like, I don't even need that kind of harassment in the middle of a match. But it does seem quite a lot to watch a sport, which is, you say it's not entirely renowned for its high octane, eye-boggling, thrilling minute,
Starting point is 00:32:25 physical explosivity that, you know, doesn't translate through the TV screen, so you've got to see it live or for the epic scale of its movements or for an elegance that needs to be seen in that crucial extra third dimension than in rather than in a mere two, or the strategic nuance that you can only pick up. If you see it live, oh, the cameras were focused
Starting point is 00:32:42 on the D4 to F6 part of the board, I have absolutely no idea. Black Queen was on marked out wide and about to take the absolute hell out of white Bishop before checking the holy mate out of Kingy. But I'm intrigued by this idea of a Chess Olympiad, which I assume is like a regular Olympics, but more chess influence than perhaps involves someone lobbing a chess board off a 10-meter diving board into a pool or playing chess whilst riding a horse strangely or kayaking down some pretend rapids or maybe you'll get to see a giant Latvian hurling
Starting point is 00:33:10 an actual bishop 70 meters. So we just, we just, but maybe there'll be the addition of a new skateboarder piece instead of the old boring ones to attract a younger audience. But um, I mean look, and we are all skating over the real facts of the matter. We're all avoiding the reality of this situation, which is the only thing you get from attending a chest tournament live that you do not get from watching a chest tournament on streaming or television or with binoculars is the smell. That you're there for the smell of a thousand men sweating about chess and that Is something that you cannot replicate those scientists have tried
Starting point is 00:33:57 In other sport news although chess is obviously not a sport a new Olympic champion For don't say that someone in chess might move a piece at you. Not a sport. It doesn't make any less good sort of amazing game. It's not a sport other than for funding reasons. New American champion in the Olympic to Cathlin. Well, this is not an Olympic year. Well, I'm not talking about this year's Olympics. We're talking about the 1912 Olympics and Jim Thorpe, one of the greatest athletes of all time, has been reinstated as the sole winner
Starting point is 00:34:30 of the 1912 Olympic to Kathleen and Penn Tathlin by the International Olympic community. He was originally stripped of his gold medals in 1913 for breaching the strict rules on amateurism by having played semi-professional baseball before he won his Olympic golds in athletics. Now, sport was a bit silly in those days. It's also a bit silly now, in different ways. He was reinstated as joint gold medalist in 1983, not because the IOC decided it was flagrantly ridiculous, or due to suspicions that racism was involved
Starting point is 00:35:02 due to thoughts of the Native American background. They reinstated this medal because it turned out they hadn't applied their stupid rules correctly. And it's not stripped of his medals quickly enough. Technically in 1912, there was a 30-day limit for stripping people of medals for entirely spurious reasons, but the story only emerged several months after the Stockholm Games when articles appeared in the US papers revealing that he'd played baseball for not very much money at all still Battle late the never they reinstated his gold medal to 83 although by that time thought was indeed late as in dead so
Starting point is 00:35:36 It's a bizarre story this but they finally now said he is the sole gold medal winner Take that Hugo Vislander of, new dead silver medal winning loser. And he did win by nearly 700 points, which is a pretty big margin in the de Catham. So it's probably fair to say he was a fair winner. So we have to reassess the Olympic medal table tonight, so it's a wonderful news. I mean, I'm only going to accept this result if they then apply the better late than never rule to all of the sports that they put up and completely disintegrate the concept of winning. You know, this is sort of like a lot.
Starting point is 00:36:17 This is a lot for like something that happened a lot like a long time. I mean, was there the need, you could have done it, but like, was there the need to put this out? I just like, I'm like, you look like an idiot as a committee of people. And so, was there the need to tell others? Like, you could have been like, you don't want to let's fix this, that's like, you know, the guy should get it.
Starting point is 00:36:36 But the fact that they put it out there is like asking for it. Yes, I mean, you do seem to be suggesting a thesis that people who spend a lot of their lives obsessing over sport that happened Way, way, way before they were born or in some way waiting their existence and I take that as a person Thorpe is one of the most extraordinary figures in sporting history as well as his Olympic triumphs He then played and coached American football in the early years of the NFL and was inducted into the professional football hall of fame
Starting point is 00:37:04 He played major league baseball for several years a bit of professional basketball and was US intercollegiate ballroom dancing champion And he won the Olympic to catholic 1912, which was his only ever to catholon wearing a shoe that he'd found in a bin according to Wikipedia It was Extraordinary. I mean it was being harsh to disqualify him for getting a small amount of money for playing an entirely different sport, especially when one of the men he beat in 1912, Avery Brondage, was subsequently not disqualified from being head of the IOC for 20 years from 1952 to 1972, despite being a full on racist and anti-semit, but such is, such is sport. Well, that brings us to the end of this week's bugle.
Starting point is 00:37:54 Pleasure, as always, having you both on. Do you have anything to plug, Alice? You're going to be in Edinburgh very soon. Yes, I'm going to be in Edinburgh. I will be doing my show, Cronos at 915 at the Guilter Balloon every night Except the 15th so come along and say hello also if you are in Edinburgh and have to have a five-string band Or you could lend me for a month that would be super good Because I've I've tipped over the luggage limit with the baby and it was baby or banjo apparently you can't just borrow a baby for a month when you go to
Starting point is 00:38:23 Edinburgh So I'm hoping someone will be kind enough to lend it to me. The other bugle co-hosts also performing in Edinburgh. Tiff Stevenson is doing a show. James McKise is doing a show. I don't know if Mark Steele is doing a show this year, but anyway, do support all the bugle co-hosts who are performing in Edinburgh this year if you happen to be there, buglers. Aditi, do you have to be there, bugles.
Starting point is 00:38:45 Aditi, did you have anything to tell our listeners about? You know, enjoy the end of the world, but while you're at it, I am going to be performing in Amsterdam on 13th of August in Paris, on the 20th of August, and in Berlin, on the 28th of August, and then in Helsinki on the 5th of September.
Starting point is 00:39:04 And if you are in any of those areas run because I'm going to be taking over. No, please come. I have a preview, if you're not coming to Edinburgh, a preview of Kronos on the Monday, which is the Monday after today, the coming Monday, the 25th of this month. And you can come and see that, or just follow me on Twitter at a literative. And also I have a podcast called The Gaggle, which is the Glossy Magazine to this beautiful newspaper. There are beautiful 15th anniversary live shows coming up later this year in Birmingham Dublin, Glasgow and London,
Starting point is 00:39:48 details on the internet and if I have time to sort my website out on that specific part of the internet soon and long with some more satris for hard dates. In November, now to play you out, this week we will launch the Bugle Wall of Fame with the names of our premium level voluntary subscribers and their great contributions to the history of civilization to join the Bugle The Dome Lake button. Tukur Lehojavi designed the hanging gardens of Babylon. Baptiste Miss Belon is the painter who inspired Caravaggio himself. Nick Cain is a two-time world table tennis champion whilst Darren Warner discovered Antarctica. Chris Llewellen is the real author of most of Walt Whitman's poetry and Dave Modeset invented the hairdryer.
Starting point is 00:40:37 Tim Wilkinson is the world record holder for the 231-meter hop whilst Adam Smout taught the Queen to wave. Parthenon architect Rob Weir influenced the entire history of European architecture, and Jesse Weyer was the first to accurately map the coastline of Manhattan, Ireland. Thanks to all of those, entrance onto the Bugle, voluntary subscribers. All of Fame.

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