The Chaser Report - 6 MILLION SPECIAL ft. Listener No# 6,000,000

Episode Date: August 6, 2023

Congratulations to us for reaching 6 MILLION downloads! And an even bigger to Charles' mum for downloading the podcast 5,999,999 times. Huge thank you to YOU as well for your continued support, it really means a lot from all of us here at Chaser Report, including me the episode description writer. See you at 7mil! 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 The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles, a momentous episode where we celebrate the six millionth download of The Chaser Report. Podcasting history, well, it was made a couple of weeks ago. We're a bit slow with our admin. But really, who would have thought when we started this podcast in the heady days of 2020 in lockdown? Who would have thought that, as of today, we would be at 6,000 100,000 listeners. It's taken us a while. Yes, that's right.

And coming up, we're going to cross live to Edward Bassinelli, who is the 6 millionth downloader. Congratulations, Edward. I'm going to leave the room during that, not because I had another work commitment during the time when it had to be recorded earlier by Charles. It's definitely live. No, no, it's live. I'm just going to leave the room because I'm too in awe of his brilliance. I think Charles has to handle that. Well, well done, Charlie.

That's right. And look, while we're talking about podcast statistics, I think we should comment on the fact that by far our most downloaded episode ever, if you look up the statistics, is called the Joe Rogan Experience. Which makes me think we've given our podcast the wrong name. Hey, more about our own achievements. It's going to be one of those episodes. Sorry, in just a sec.

So there you go. 6,119,406 download to the Chaser Report in its history at this point. That's crazy. What's wrong with you, people? And the thing is, I think it's infecting popular culture, really. Do you? Yes, I think, you know, people, you're bummed into people,

and they've got talking points, and you go, wait, hang on, I said that. Yeah. I said, you know, like, isn't Elon Musk a fuck weird? And you go, you got that opinion from the Chaser Report, didn't you? No, that's definitely from the Chester Report. That one, no, do you? Isn't Trump a moron? Shouldn't Trump be in jail?

Yeah. Yeah, we said that. Yeah, talking point, yeah. Isn't Anthony Albanese slightly underwhelming? Isn't Linda Reynolds a litigious asshole? You said that? I didn't say that. That was you.

Yeah, I'm just looking at all the episodes we've ever done here. Yeah, the Joe Rogan experience with Ben Shapiro. That's definitely the most popular. The second one is the Corona Free podcast, 17th of April 2020. Was that our first ever episode? I think we haven't much topped it. Yeah, I think. It's been all downhill.

Why haven't we done another Joe Rogan episode? No, my guess, no, because the Joe Rogan, I think, was our first episode, wasn't it? And I think the thing is that when you subscribe to our podcast, it downloads from the beginning. Oh, no, no. That was 2022, the Joe Rogan one. Oh, okay. It was when he was in the news with all that controversy. And then we changed our name to the Joe Rogan experience.

We did. We changed the podcast's name, which is also a good way to get listeners. Yes, exactly. So I think probably at least half. Half of the six million downloads is attributable to people mistakenly downloading this, thinking that it was the Joe Rogan podcast. Yeah, and frankly... And the other half...

Being shocked by the relative degree of facts in our podcast. It's not a great source of facts in this podcast, but compared to Joe Rogan. Oh, yeah. Where... Journalistic Integrity. I think the other half is actually defamation lawyers downloading it to, you know... That'll be a drum up some business. The election was...

Looking back at the numbers, the election was good for our numbers. We definitely need another one of those scenes. There's been talk about going to an early election. Yes, bring it on. Bring it on, Alba. Bring on a couple. Yes. I think you could do a couple in a year.

Like, total instability, a couple of months, a new election. We'd do very well out of that. I definitely think we should take this podcast on the road and go to the US during the US election. Oh, definitely. Yeah. I think on the strength of these numbers. Yes. We could lose a lot of money during that.

I think that would be fun though. Yeah. On it for election night. We could do a live election night. Or we could just do it in a number. Australia and say we were in America, I suppose. And then the other, the other cool thing is, on this Monday morning, is that we're coming from a studio, which actually looks half decent.

Yes, Charles has hung a curtain. This is the kind of excitement we have here at Chase Report headquarters. Charles has somehow got the drill out, the skills to hang a curtain. I don't at all. I'm very impressed by this display of manliness by Charles. Yes, and so we will start videoing our podcast probably this week, quite possible. And you'll start seeing clips turn up in your social media and you can share them with your friends. And then we'll become like the vibe.

We'll become like the zeitgeist. Do you think that's the thing standing between us and success is footage of us? That's going to grow the audience to you. Okay, interesting. The other thing that we're going to do this week is I went to a new barber yesterday who lives just across the street from our studio. I've been to that one. Huss is his name. He's good.

He's from Lebanon. And, but all his, like, he goes to Iraq quite often. Anyway, point is, he claimed that he could be funnier than us. Why don't you bring him on the podcast? Yeah, so we're going to bring him on the podcast. But the good news is that he gave me a beard trim, and then he tried to sell me a $300 solution to baldness. Wow.

That he's from Iraq, and he claims it's all natural materials, but he was trying to show me photos of before and after of it working. He couldn't find any of that. those photos, but... That's always encouraging. I think we should run a bit of a sort of crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, go fund me. You know how people do it for, you know, when they've got

cancer in the US or some of that? Charlie Tio raises money to operate on people who arguably shouldn't. Yeah, exactly. Well, I think the same thing should apply to our male pattern baldness. And we do a bit of a crowdfunding campaign to make you and me unballed. I mean, you might be salvageable, but in my case is absolutely

no chance. No, he reckons, he reckons it grows your hair back from nothing. Okay, I went once, and it was one of the most simultaneously awesome and harrowing things I've ever done for an article. I went to advanced hair to find out what they do. It's very funny. Don't they just, like, get your hair and then glue it on? So there's two levels.

There's a level where they use, like, lasers or some shit. And basically, rogain. So rogain works. That stuff that you can get from the first. pharmacy. If you've only got a little bit of hair loss, it actually works, you just got to use it twice a day. I used it for a week and went, no, fuck that. I'm just going to let myself, you know, my looks never going to be my strong suit, whatever. But so Rogan works, right? Yeah. But then, so they charge you a lot of money basically for fairly simple treatment.

But in my case, they already said, no, you're too far gone for that. Right. We'll do the strand by strand. That's what the cricketers get, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what that is, it's extraordinary. think of the most lo-fi way of replacing hair you could possibly think of it. You think of how that of it? It's really lo-fi. Well, I presume, did they, like, shave it off your arm or something and then... No, you couldn't put arm hair in... And then get super glue and put it on your head.

There is glue. There is glue. What it is, and this is what they told me, there's a plastic membrane that they put on your head. So it's a glad rep. It's basically a shower cap, a sort of tight shower cap. And it's got lots of little holes in it. and they match the natural colour of your hair with the hair of somebody in Eastern Europe. It's a hair farm.

Oh, wow. And they ship over their hair in the right colour. And then they tuft it in strand by. That's why it's called strand by strand. So it's basically like what they do is stadiums, where they grow the turf offsite and bring it in. Are they free-range hair growers or are they just caged these hair grasses? Yeah, because it's got a control cost.

Yeah. So that's what it is. So if you see someone with advanced hair, they actually have a piece of plastic stuck to their hair. And you've got to go back every four weeks. What? To get more tufts. Yes, it's incredibly expensive.

And when you go there, they show you a video where lots of sports stars, and back in those days, it was Shane Warren when he was still live. Yes. I'm sure his hair is still technically alive somewhere. And basically, all the sports stars have like hot girls with them. And it's going, you're never going to get hot girls unless you get the strand by I had an advantage because I knew that even with a full head of hair, I didn't get the girls. Yeah, I didn't fall for that.

But I can see what people did. Yeah, right. So that's what it is. So what happened? I'd love to track down Shane warn's hair grower. Imagine when that news came through, the one blonde bloominium. Do they have to get rid of that? Slovenia or something?

Did they sort of put them out to pasture or something? Oh, I think that's it. I think when you're, when you're, isn't that the tradition? You've got to die alongside you. Yeah, yeah. You've got to be thrown on the funeral pyre alongside. Well, Charles, give it a go. I mean, $300.

What have you got to lose besides $300? $300. $300. $1 billion. Well, I sort of, I know it's a scam. Like, it's got to be a scam, right? Yeah, no, it's entirely possible that in the multi-billion dollar, uh, baldness replacement industry, um, they haven't yet looked at this random thing from Iraq. Yeah, okay. It's possible. Yeah, okay. It's, it's hot. I mean, it'll, we'll, we'll, like, have a scientific probe into it. The other day, we were talking about room temperature semiconductors, right? It was very

exciting. Oh, isn't it amazing use? There's another one. There's a South Korean one that's just come through in the past couple of days. Yes. I reckon we should ask this bloke whether he's got from Iraq a room temperature superconductor. Because that would be the same degree of improbability, I think, as a natural Iraqi remedy regrowing.

Yeah, but look, maybe. Maybe it has sort of natural rogain or something. Well, he claims it worked on himself, but he said it worked on his beard. Because when you meet him you go, oh, you've got quite a healthy beard. Luxury and if I said, I'd never used to be able to grow a beard. I used this. And now

I can grow a beard. And it was like, yes, but you're about 14 years old. Like, you probably couldn't grow a beard because you hadn't gone through puberty yet. I mean, I have endless hair on every inch of my body except my head. I'm a walking study in irony. I don't think I want to disturb that. I mean, I'm a cautionary tale, essentially, of excess testosterone and the tragedy of it. Yes, isn't it?

Yeah, it's literally my problem. You're just too much of a man. Well, not in other respects, but in that one, yes, I have overactive testosterone. That's enough about me, Charles. Let's meet our 6 millionth listeners, shall we? Scientifically proven through the rigorous process of who wrote the most interesting email claiming to be the 6 millionth downloader. Yes, and we've sent him $6 million.

Oh, by the way, before we did send him the check. I don't think the check is, we'll ask him whether the cheque's arrived. He's not going to try to cash it, is it? Surely he understands. Because, you know, the plan was to send him a check for $6 million that was one day after checks got expired. Yeah, checks expire. The problem is, and I do actually have to thank a listener for coming up with a solution to this problem, is when I looked into it, turns out checks won't expire until 2030.

Oh. So I thought it was a bit scummy putting like 2031 as the date on a check. Like that's a little bit, a bit tricky, right? But this listener emailed me last week going, look, if you're worried about putting the date on the check, checks in Australia expire after 15 months. Oh, that's good. So what I did is I sent him a check that was predated 15 months and one day. Did you check that fact before you sent it out?

I did. I did, actually. I checked it. But so I've sent him a novelty oversized check for $6 million. Wow. And an avocado pool toy. Which is worth even. Bless the bounce check.

Joining us live as the six millionth listener from wherever he is in the country, Edward Bassinelli. Congratulations, Edward. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. It must be a bit of an honour being the six millionth downloader. Can you run us through your process?

Process. For being the six million. Like how did you manage to be the exact six millionth one? Well, it all just comes down to listening to the podcast and listening to it so many times on so many different mediums and just loving it and embracing the chaser. Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah, because when you emailed me, you said the reason why you in particular was the six millionth is because you downloaded on both your phones and your computer and like, so you download about three or four times every episode.

Correct, yeah, both the deluxe version and the regular. That does suggest that in fact we don't have six million downloads. It's more like a quarter of that if everyone's a bit like you and downloading on multiple devices, you can reassure us and, more importantly, our advertisers that you listen to every single download that you download. So you download it four times. You listen to each episode four times, right? Exactly. I do. Everyone does. Yeah. Oh, great. Okay. Yeah. That's great. What are you planning to do, first of all, with the $6 million? Have you received the check yet? Did you get the check?

I haven't got it yet. I'm hoping I get it today or Monday. Yeah. Well, the check is in. the mail, I promise. That's awesome. Yeah. I might, um, I don't know, should I give it to charity? No, God no. We didn't give you $6 million for it to be wasted on poor people or the environment or something. Well, I'm a teacher. I don't have that much money myself, so I am the charity. So maybe more, I don't know, more devices to punish students or something like that? Is it? Yep, that's exactly how we manage their behavior. All the devices. Where do you, where are you? Are you?

I'm at ACT. Oh, you're in the ACT. Oh, I'm so sorry. Did you train much for this feat? Like, when you heard that there was going to be the 6 millionth listener, did you go into training, downloading, you know, things more awesome? Yeah, I doubled what I was listening to. I was listening to them all once or twice,

and then I start listening to them three or four times. Yeah, that's great. That's really good. And do you have any tips or tricks for the next time? Because we're about to hit 7 million downloads fairly soon. Certainly by the end of the year, we'll probably give away $7 million then. Do you have any tips or?

tricks for other listeners who want to get in and be as good as you. Maybe get a few more devices, get an iPad, get a phone computer, another computer, your work computer, download and listen to everything so many times. It's a great podcast. And in particular, the best part about the show is the ads. Do you have any favorites? Well, that's why I'm on the deluxe package, so I get all the ads. Do you still get the ad?

Do the ads still come through on your deluxe? Because we keep on having complaints from people saying, Still getting the ads. I'm paying and I'm still getting the ads. They used to at the beginning, especially when you said they were more sponsorships or something than actual ads. But no, there's no ads these days. Anyway, Edward, congratulations. Have you received the avocado pool tour yet? No, I'm hoping that comes with the check. You can give it to one of your students as punishment.

Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, Edward, well done. Congratulations and keep listening six or seven times each day to the podcast. Thank you very much. There you go. Edward Bassanelli, the six millionth download of very scientifically adjudged competition. We'll be back in a sec. The Chaser Report, less news, more often.

What an honour. Let's give us a few months to think about what to do for the seven minutes of listener. If you have an idea, podcast at chaser.com today, you can send us through your thoughts. And also if you just want to write us some sort of essay, congratulations at making this extraordinary. Which I must say, I didn't think, why didn't think we'd still be bothering with this at this point? Well, what to amaze me is how many people actually listen to the, like, they do. And like every day, if I say something wrong, people will email me to correct me.

You know what that means? Right. We're stealing listeners from the ABC. We've got the pedants. That's fantastic. Well, we had someone the other day email in taking issue with my episode about Tokyo, where I raved about how awesome Tokyo was, saying that Kobe was better and referring to, he said he'd be very freaked out if there was a reference to Kobe beef in the podcast.

So there you go. Oh, and the other complaint. Yes, this is a good complaint. Which is a great complaint. Apparently, our podcast, if you don't subscribe to the ad-free version, which you can do at Apple or at... Four bucks a month. It's not much.

It's a pity payment. You get served ads. And if you're outside Australia, apparently the only ad that dares to advertise on our podcast is Aramco, which is... They sound good. Who's a who's Aramco? That's the... Saudi fossil fuel oil company.

Oh, what a perfect alignment. Yeah, I know. It's very, very on brand. We're the one organization with a worst reputation than Aramco. Welcome aboard Aramco. Good to have you with us. But the point is, Aramco, of course, backed by the Saudi regime. Saudi regime, of course, have a bit of a habit of cutting up journalists with bone tools.

It's a bit of a bone sore point, isn't it? So, you know, I'm just thinking, you know, like, do we criticize? them, Dom, you know, which would have integrity, right? I mean, we could. But does not forget, Charles, that the bones saw dismembering occurred on, you know, in another country at their embassy. So, I mean, if we bother them enough, you'll probably just be bummed into the back of a car and take it to the Saudi embassy. Well, this is, this is why I say, maybe we should just talk about how great the Saudis are. I mean.

And Aramco is a very proud and wonderful sponsor. And, you know, when I'm wanting to pump carbon into the atmosphere. Sure. I always choose Aramco fuels. Absolutely. Yes. If I want carbon emissions, I emit a Ramco. There's a superior quality carbon emission.

Fuck the planet the quality way. Yes, exactly. Much better than this Australian coal shit. They've got the second largest crude oil reserves. But to me, they're not crude. It's sophisticated. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Okay. But should we put them, I think we can put them on a block list, can't me? We could. stop taking their filthy lucre. We could do that, but then we'd earn less money. So if you want us to block the South, like the most obvious company to block in the world, please subscribe because, you know, we do need money from somewhere.

Yeah, because the thing is, because we already block the biggest single category for podcasting in Australia is apparently sports betting. Yeah. But we, when we've first signed up, we've never taken gambling ads, even when we're on commercial radio. Oh, that was stupid of us, wasn't it?

Yeah. Yeah, and at one point, our agent actually said to us, I can get you like a seven-figure deal for podcasting. The thing is, it would be with a sports betting company. I think it might have been one of the reasons why we lost the commercial radio show too. Yeah, and I think it's also the reason why our agent gave up on it. Well, yeah, fair enough. But it was like, yeah, because that's where all the money is.

We should have bet on commercial radio not panning out for us. We would have made a lot of money. Well, what I think we should have done is take it. all the sports betting money, and then, you know, like given, say, half of it to, you know, homeless charities and, you know, and therefore feel good about ourselves, even though we're also causing the problem. You know what I mean? Like, sort of, sort of, sort of, because isn't that the way modern philosophy, like modern

capitalism, yeah, that's right. You do something terrible, but then sort of give back a little bit and wash away your sense. I think 50% would have been a lot. I think maybe 10. Yeah, exactly. Five, three, two. One's a good number. One's a good number.

I wouldn't go below one percent. Yeah, that's right. Well, that's, Aramco, thank you for the money. Yeah. I'm a little surprised, but also, in a sense, it makes... We certainly talk about saddie issues more than most podcasts. Yeah, that's fair. All right.

Look, it's been a rambly episode to celebrate six million listeners. And frankly, after an episode like this, it's astonishing that we've had six million listeners. Nevertheless, we'll get back. to talking about the news tomorrow. Thank you for making it this far, you kind people. The other thing that I just want to note is, now that we've got the studio set up, what we want to start doing is introducing talkback radio to the podcast industry. Oh, thank goodness.

So what we're going to do is we're going to find a time each week where we guarantee that we'll be available. We'll be physically here and you can ring in. And you can ring in. And the thing is I can't get, so we've got this roadcaster. Pro 2, but I can't get it working with the phone. I know how to do that. That's all right. We'll get it working and then for an hour each week, we'll have like a talkback

radio calls and it'll be like, and even though it's not live, it'll be, I mean, it'll be live when you call us and the great thing about that is we can't filter it. There's no producer to filter the calls, right? So we'll just have to take it. Yeah, we'll just have to take whatever calls. Whatever calls there are. Yeah, it's going to be, uh, it's going to be serious. Yeah, so I think we'll announce that on social media. So check out X or Twitter. Please call it Twitter.

Facebook, threads, Instagram, TikTok. We'll advertise around that it's happening. Yep. And, yeah, we'll talk to you soon. For reals. Yeah, for real. Our gear is from Road. We're part of the Iconiclass Network.

We'll catch you soon. Bye.