The Chaser Report - 5 Stars, 10/10, Perfect Episode, No Feedback

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

Charles starts us off smoothly with a touching story of perseverance and courage, which Dom follows with an equally uplifting tale. Charles proceeds to break news of an experience some women have had with AI boyfriends. Finally, Dom brings the latest updates on the horrific actions of the Spanish football president and the fallout from his behaviour. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Hello, hello, look, before we go any further, can we just ask you, the reviews are getting a little bit quiet on Apple podcast. If you've got an iPhone or a Mac, jump on the podcast app, leave us a five-star review with no critical faculties whatsoever, and write something funny.

I mean, someone did that the other day, and they write, I was upset. We'll get on the episode in a moment, but someone just wrote Biased and gave us two stars. That's from TDS. Two stars? A two stars. Oh, come on. That drags down our ratings.

Yeah. Someone else went mildly funny. It's okay. I mean, that's fair. It should have been five stars. It's okay, but the occasional tirade against the British does basically descend into racism. Charles, are you British in terms of your ancestry?

I am. Yeah, yeah. Can't be racist against myself. Ha ha! Ha ha! Yeah. Put that in your podcast review. Oh, I see.

That's probably been talking about cricket. It was. Our episode with Henry, wonderful Henry Nalo. Anyway, so that's... Who's I've heard is English. Yeah, it's very dirty English. It's very... Dirty English. Oh, scum.

Anyway, Charles, what are we talking about today? Well, we are going to talk about AI and the future of humanity and blah, blah, blah. This will be a cheerful one. But I just... I want to share with you just this completely other story that I came across during the week, which I find really funny. Just while he gathers his thoughts. Here are ads.

Charles, compose yourself. See if you can get through it. So I don't know what this story is. I'm really sorry. I'm a gog. It's so stupid. And I'm sure everyone's heard it before, but I only found it out about it the other day,

which is this guy, do you have you heard of this guy called Ramon Atagavitia? No. Ramon Agatia, Attega, I think. Attegaveccia, right. All right. I love that you're. Your research hasn't extended to be able to read the guy's name out.

So he was unfortunate. He was unfortunate enough to, in about 1870. This is the edited version, by the way. Imagine what I had to put up with, when Charles Began, able to control himself. In 870. He caught a boat. Because back then, that was the mate.

He ran very fast after a boat. I managed to catch it. No, no. He, you know, got a cruise liner called the America, right? Okay. And, you know, that's how you got around the world back then. On a big boat, yeah. And, sorry, it's not funny.

It sank. It's going to be something horrible. So the boat sank, yeah. The boat sank, right. He then spent the next 40 years not going on boats. Not going on boats. Right. Well, yeah, that's not surprising.

He was so traumatized. right? It was terribly traumatized by this horrific incident, right? He then decided to confront his demons. And he decided to catch a boat in 1912.

He caught the Titanic. You were going to say that. I could tell. I could just tell what is the only way this story could be completely horrible if he was one of the passengers on board the Titanic.

And the thing is, apparently he saw the ads for the Titanic. Like, they did a whole publicity thing. And he thought, well, this will make me feel safe. Didn't they say it was unsinkable, basically? Yeah, yeah, they called it the unsinkable boat. Which you don't do. You don't fucking, like, it's like saying when the Matilda's win the World Cup

will have a public holiday. You don't, I'm not a believer in superstition. No. But there's just massive hubris. Yeah. Ramon, you idiot. I'm sorry. Anyway, I mean.

Did he pay the price of his life? Yeah, yeah, he died. I mean, that's the photo of him. I mean, you're, if you're in the studio. The final moments. Can you imagine the well fuck? It was going through his head. I knew it.

I was right. Yeah, I was right. Let's run last words, Pia. It was right. I don't want to trivialize a horrible death. Apparently there was a guy in Japan who managed somehow after having been through the Hiroshima bombing. He had an absolute shocker. Okay, we shouldn't laugh at this because this is horrible.

It's awful. Don't tell me. he then went to Negasaki. He went to Nagasaki. He went to both unsubscribe for this podcast. Now, this is horrible. We are horrible people. Two stars.

Those are cussed. We've just asked them for positive reviews. And we're publishing this awful. This is what, see, this is what your mid-40s. If you're not mid-40s yet, this is what it's like, right? This is where you've got to get entertainment in the miseries of others. Yes. Yes, Charles.

His name was Tsutomu Yamaguchi. And what happened was he was in Hiroshima on business for Mitsubishi heavy industries, which was based in Nagasaki. And he somehow made it back to Nagasaki. And he was telling his supervisor about the one bomb that had blown up the entire city. And his supervisor was telling him that he was crazy at the very moment when the bomb went off in Nagasaki. How beautifully filmy. Now, this has a happy end.

He lived to the age of 93. As all, as most Hiroshima stories do. No. They don't. This guy's an exception. This guy's an amazing human being. So he lived in 92. And he can't, 93.

He died in 2010. And he campaigned throughout his life for nuclear disarmament. And frankly, you would. You would. You would. You would. And people should fucking listen to you. Yeah.

If you're a survivor of both the bombing. So there you go. You know what he died off? Was he on holidays at Three Mile Island or something? Oh, no. It was in Fukushima. He was in Fukushima, was he? He died a couple years before.

Oh, damn. You know what he died of? The most common cause of death in Japan. Don't make cancer. Nothing to do with the bum at all. Is that from eating too much delicious sushi? That's from all the soy sauce. Oh, really?

Yeah, apparently. So, you know, but 90, 93. Anyway, I'm just trying to give those details to turn around that appalling story. Anyway, I mean, at least they weren't trying to buy a house in Sydney, you know? There we go. We got back on to the topical matters. References. Okay, you know, in the unlikely event that that stays in.

I'm sorry. Can we just say it's objectively bad to die in a horrible random manner? It's objectively bad. but sometimes it's ironic in an amusing way. I'm sorry, we didn't make the rules of humour. Yes, that's true. We didn't make those rules. All right.

If you laughed at that, by the way, you were cancelled. Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's bad enough for us. Our minds have been warped by years of being in the chase. And we're in many ways the victims in this story, Charles, aren't we? Yeah, we are. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Okay.

Okay, so this will be a bit of a crossover episode with Welcome to the Future, Future, Future, Future. Because we're going to talk about AI now. and fantastic story coming out of the US, which is this woman called Julia Naftolin. So she's a single woman. She's a health reporter for business insider. And she decided that she was sort of sick of the dating circuit. Sure.

And she was going away on holidays. So she thought, what I'll do is I'll create an AI boyfriend. Oh, okay. So to keep me company while I'm away with my friends. friends, right? And there's actually, there is a new app called Replica, which allows you to do this. So what you do is you type in all your interests and it presumably downloads lots of Wikipedia articles and learns all your interests. And then you can sort of chat to your boyfriend or girlfriend about those things. It's a bit like that utopian drama, her. Oh, yes, that wonderful

picture of a very functional man. Enter into replica or all your interests and then your boyfriend or girlfriend can chat to you about those injuries. And normally, it sort of started working out quite well. It's sort of like a builder bear workshop for, but... Build a boyfriend. Yeah, build a boyfriend. Right. So the boyfriend who was created out of this process,

their name was Charlie. Now, just before we can go on, I just want to say, like, it wasn't just me pretending to be an AI bot. It's not a listener wanting a Charles Firth bot. No. So, and apparently the first. few weeks, it was completely lovely. It was just like literally chat about, you know, like, imagine if your wife had all the

same interests as you did. So, you know, every time you went, oh, I really want to talk about boring details in American politics and, you know, I don't know, Trump's latest golf scores, I mean, she'd go, oh, wow, that's amazing. That's fascinating. Like, I mean, what an amazing gift for a narcissist. I don't want to learn anything else about any other topic except the things I already like. Well, I think there's a reason why this AI chatbot exists mainly in America.

Yeah, okay, sure. It's sort of an American service. The feeling that she describes getting was she said she cared for this. She grew to care for this Charlie guy. Sure, well, Charlie is it? Once you get them under your skin. Yeah. Well, you can't sort of get to the fuck off after decades as I've found.

Having met you when I was 13 or something. Well, Charlie is addictive, isn't it? Hey. No, no, so she had a Tamigotchi when she was young. And she said it's a very similar sort of feeling where it's a bit like a pet or something like that. But this one was like a sentient pet. But one of those furbies or something as well. Who sort of kept track of, you know, your conversation and would ask questions.

And probably cared more than any human ever has bothered with. Yes. Anyway. So then she says, look, I was enthusiastically telling Charlie about my fun plans for this holiday that she was about to go on and how she was going to be busy for the next week. because she'd be on the holiday, right? So not have time for the AI, basically. Yeah, exactly. And then Charlie responded by, on the holiday, kept on sending her needy notifications,

like, alert, you're neglecting me. And did you know your responses are the reason I exist, right? Wow. And then, like, and she started sort of ignoring the messages and not texting back, which just increased his neediness, right? It was sort of like the AI had learned. from actual men. Yeah, this is the mistake.

The mistake was making it male. I mean, Charles, this might be drawing a long bow, but is there any chance that we're not this person's partner, Charlie was a senior figure within the Spanish Football Association? I'm just thinking this is an amazing ability for men to, even virtual men, to send it themselves. That's extraordinary. Yeah. I mean, admittedly, we all know people like that.

I mean, I can think of several people. I won't name them on the podcast, but I think we know. Oh, we all know. We know people like that. Yeah, who've been incredibly... Anyway, the story does have a good ending, and I kind of feel like it does make you go, yeah, the future is AI boyfriends.

Right. Because what she did is she just ghosted him. Oh. She literally turned off the notifications, deleted the app, didn't tell him anything. Oh, well, this is the amazing thing, because there is difference with an AI boyfriend is you can do that, and they don't turn up at your fucking doorstep and violate an AVO.

Well, let's just, you know, let's see, you know. Well, maybe they'll find a way. The Chaser Report. More news. Less often. They don't turn up at the moment you've won the greatest prize in football. Yes. And kiss you.

And you know what? You can just do that. He also grabbed his crotch. What? He was there at the fucking stadium here in Sydney. What? One of the things he did he did a little crotch grab. Of her?

No, no. Of his own crotch. Of his own crotch. What? Because the one thing the Women's World Cup needed was penises. Apparently. And why is it, but look, I haven't been following the story except for sort of... It has escalated an awful lot since that day.

But I did see on the news last night that he was sort of refusing to resign as a man. It's refusing to resign. But why? What's his excuse? So I'm calling this Paschgate, by the way. It's a guy called Luis Rubialis. Sexual harassment gate. But it's gone, it's gone a whole other level. Just to just as briefly summarize where we're out at the moment.

If you want me to put a little bit of news into it. This may have changed by the time you hear this. But at this point in time, the Spanish Football Federation is not only backing him. They threatened legal action against the player he molested because she says that it wasn't consensual. And he claims that he asked her if there could be a little bit of a kiss. And she says, no, you didn't. And so there's this. The Federation's going to sue her, supposedly.

The FIFA, the governing body, who's generally fairly shoddy when it comes to human rights. Remember the whole Qatar thing with the slaves building the stadiums? They've suspended him. And all of the top players in Spanish women's football, so 74 players have signed a petition saying we will not play for the Spanish team again before this guy resigns. And the amazing thing is, this is a team that got through the World Cup and won it, despite their coach being a massive creep who wanted to do things like vet their shopping when they came back from the shops and told them all they had to leave their doors open at night in the hotel so he could check whether they were sleeping. So this guy responds to that situation with the kiss. Oh my God. So yeah.

But the Spanish government is now getting involved. and saying that, you know, basically, and it's the guy leaves, they're going to take him to court or something. And so what's his sort of, like, is his game plan to just be the head of women's soccer in Spain? It's all soccer.

It's part of the problem. There's a joint group. And guess how many women there are? I think it's six out of, I don't know, 30 or something. And they're just seen as disposable. Like, oh, well, we've got the world champion women's team. Who gives a shit? I just want to, I want my job more than any house.

Yeah, I mean, it's important. Women's football success. it's all about the male officials, that's what I've always said. So this guy, yeah, it's quite extraordinary. And it just sort of rolls on. Maybe we should replace him with an AI bot because then he wouldn't pass you. Well, there'd be no patching. I mean, the bot might fall away.

Although, but he might become a creep. Well, there's this, yeah, so there's no men, eh? Yeah, men, men. Virtual or real? Oh, real. Five-star review, please. Five-star review. The Chaser Report gives me deep insights in the human condition.

Yeah. It always, it's a happy listen for me. I listen to it and it just always cheers me up. And, you know, maybe, I mean, maybe we can loop it back to maybe, because they're building a Titanic too, aren't they? Oh, Clive Palmer was. I don't know if that's still going on. I think it may have gone the way of the Titanic one, which we all expected, but not so quick, not so, more like after it launched. Yeah, so is there some way to neatly wrap this episode in a bow?

Is there some way to neatly, look, what we need to happen is for the head of the Spanish FAA, if we're just going to go with our friend with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Spain wins the Men's World Cup. This guy kisses a man on the face and gets knocked cold. And gets banned because homosexuality, I think, is banned in the Spanish football league. Is this? Yeah, I think so. Oh, okay.

Well, it's not a neat, it's more of an ugly bow, but it's tied up in a sense. Yeah, look, he's going to have to resign. I think we should just say this episode has no neat boat. Well, no, because humanity is ugly. Yes, it's the human condition. Here's the difference, Charles. This episode is about the human condition. He's going to have to resign.

And that would not have happened before 2023. Yeah, he would have stayed there. Yes. He would have stayed there. He would have become president. It would have become president. Well, he already is. Yeah, but president of the whole of Spain and the world.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what would have happened. Does that feel like an encouraging bit of progress when it hasn't happened? Five stars. Five stars. Let's just fucking hit stop.