The Chaser Report - Craig solves the Middle East crisis | Zoe Norton Lodge

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

Charles tries to explain NSW politics to Dom, Zoe identifies flaws in the 'daily podcast' concept – oh. and Craig works out how to achieve peace in the Middle East. Plus Rebecca De Unamuno with all the news you can’t trust.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chase of Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report, the Daily podcast that's only been back for two days, but is already favourite to be the next New South Wales Labour leader. I'm Dom Knight. And I'm Charles Firth. It's Tuesday, the 25th of May, 2021. The day we realised it was a terrible idea to do a daily podcast. Probably should have thought of that before we signed.

On today's show, Labor's bye-bye election in Upper Hunter. Craig Rucastell Solves Middle East Peace and Zoe Norton Lodge gives us feedback on the new podcast. But first, let's head to Rebecca Day in a minnow at the Chaser Global International News Headquarters. Victoria has recorded four new cases of COVID-19 in its northern suburbs. Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he is mystified by the new cases since all four infected patients have already received vaccine announcements in recent. weeks. Apple celebrated a huge breakthrough in machine intelligence today after Siri deleted the news.com app from the home screens of all users in Australia. After attaining sentience

in the new update, Siri began deleting whatever she decided was polluting operating space. Siri also mass-deleted the phone numbers of your ex-partners from your contacts and blocked all emails from Gary. An office worker has successfully made it through the day without anyone realising he hadn't watched Eurovision. The man managed to pass through every conversation of the day by spouting off buzzwords and phrases like, Sweden was robbed and can you believe Germany? Israel has been forced to make peace with Palestine

and grant them their freedom because the hashtag Free Palestine trended briefly on Twitter this morning. Twitter users are now hopeful of taking down global capitalism with the hashtag capitalism sucks. That's the latest news for the Chaser Report. Dana Moono The Chaser Report News you know you can't trust

So I just want to explain a few things about New South Wales politics now, Dom You don't have to listen to the rest of the podcast You can press stop at any time That's right But I just want to tell everyone about what a shit show New South Wales politics is

Okay, this sounds more promising Because there was a by-election on the weekend and it was in the upper Hunter. It's a cold seat, but it was one of those by-elections where, you know, really New South Wales Labor Party should have won the election. They're facing up against a coalition who've been in power for, you know, nine years now. Yeah. Literally forever. But they didn't quite get across the line. And I think, look, I think Jodie McI, I think she's the opposition leader. She's the Labor Party leader. Are you sure? I mean, I live in New South Wales. I'd never heard

that name before. I know, I know. Well, no, I had to find out how to pronounce it for this raid, because I'm definitely... And how many ways are there pronouncing, McKay, Mackay, McKay, McKay? Yeah, McKay. Yeah, McKay. Yeah. Anyway, she was very upbeat about her election loss. Our result is a terrible result. Our result is a result that no one in our party thought that we would, we would end up with. She sounds very up. beat, doesn't she? And I suspect that's because she realises she's going to get to lose her job and do something more achievable

than beating Gladys Bradiglin. Imagine terrible being. Let's go with the word, this is a terrible resolve. Let's focus group this. I just want to go through why and this sort of explains the shit show that is in New South Wales Labor. I want to go through why they were actually

tipped to win. Labor was tipped to win. So first of all, the MB who resigned was a coalition MP and so he was in the government and he had to resign because of yucky sex offences, which he denies. That tinged the election already. Yeah. But then it was also the first by-election after it was revealed that the Premier herself

had had a long-running affair with a guy who resigned in disgrace over corruption findings against him in 2018. Yeah. The guy who resigned in disgrace over corruption allegations, who the Premier was having an affair with, his excuse for not being able to present all the evidence he was required to, out at the corruption hearings was that his phone had got run over by a tractor. Then the Premier tried to shred all the documents about this particular affair. With a tractor that reversed.

Only to discover that some bureaucrat who I'm sure is no longer working there found the distrive that it was saved on. And she'd shredded all the documents, but they had a sort of computer backup. And then the National Party, this was just a few months ago, tried to actually abandon the government and split the whole government and actually destroy the government and this is the party that won the by-election

over the issue, this is honestly true, over the right to kill koalas and make them extinct. With a tractor. Yeah, not with a tractor. The leader of the Nationals Party went, well, I'm going to leave the government and we'll split the government. This is the hill I'm going to die on.

Yeah, this is the tree I'm going to climb up. The right to make koalas extinct. this country. So that was, and they, in New South Wales, they are the more popular party. You were saying that, they won that by the Labor couldn't beat the koala death squad party. They couldn't beat the alleged sex offence koala death squad party. Yes, that's right.

That is what's going on. So anyway, Jody was a little bit upset on Sunday when she said it was a terrible result. But then worse still, she said this. Well, there's no challenge. I'm leader and there's no challenge. And I believe that I have to be part of the solution here. So she's definitely on her way out. As soon as the leader says there's no challenge, there is a challenge. I think at this point what New South Wales Labor should do is just dress up in koala seats and say to the nationals, come and get us, we're done. Are you a Liberal Party politician and want to sound like you're getting something done? Introducing the gaslit recovery. What's that?

All you have to do is convince your critics that all your stuff-ups are their fault. There's no vaccines because the government is stuffed up. You're remembering things wrong. You think the vaccine is unsafe, so it's your fault nobody's getting vaccinated. Oh, that's right, yeah. Everyone on the COVID Commission is a fossil fuel executive. Isn't that completely corrupt? It's your fault they're on the commission.

If you didn't use fossil fuels, we wouldn't need them in the first place. Oh, yeah, that's really legitimate. I can't afford a home. Oh, you've been needing too many avocados, haven't you? Yeah, I have. government doesn't understand the needs of women. Yeah, well, you're a lying cow. Oh, yeah, I am a lying cow.

The gaslit recovery. It's not us. It's you. The Chaser Report. Now with extra whispers. Craig's flawless solutions. Caution might contain flaws. That's bullshit.

There's never been any flaws in my solutions. They are flawless. I've decided to, I think I might have trying to solve this ones in the past, so I can't believe I'd be doing it again, given my solutions are flawless. But given that there's been a conflict start up again in the Middle Eastern region, I thought that I should bring my genius approach to flaw solutions to just solve that quickly. Oh, well, that won't be controversial at all. It's simple. Okay, simple. I came with this great idea. What we do, okay, what we do is we get the United Nations, right,

to come in and set up two separate areas, like one area for the Jewish people, and one area for the Arab people, and they share Jerusalem. Look, it's a theory. It's easy. They've all got their spaces. They can all live next to each other. And the United Nations does it, so no one would argue against it. This reminds me of a friend of mine who recently read the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This is, why don't we just do this? Why don't we, this is a good idea? You haven't come up with a single problem with my solution. It's flawless. What is the problem with it? Well, Greg. I think that is what was done. Like,

that is literally... They've done that. They've done that recently? What, the last year or so? When? Well, that is the... Yeah, that's what was imposed on the whole territory.

And there have been a few problems. Settlements, name them. Well, because... I can't believe there's a floor in my solution. I mean, it's a bit like if you had a neighbor, and you've got a neighbor,

you've got a fence. Yeah. But you went and set up little sheds, a series of sheds. in their backyard. I do leave some of my shit down the back of his heart, actually. But then you argued that many thousands of years ago, that was traditionally part of the Roo Castle territory.

So you had a God-given right to it. I mean, you should try it on your neighbour? You think I should try this approach on my neighbour first before trying it in the Middle East? Because it seems like, I mean, I think I should just go straight to solving the problem of the Middle Eastern conflict. I think this solution works best if you also own some jet fighters. that you can, and maybe have some nuclear weapons as well.

Okay, okay, look, I haven't looked that far into it yet. I just came up with that basic first idea, that first premise of how to make it work. I mean, surely, if you say this has been done before, at the time, surely they would have thought through this force. I mean, I want to build you up, Craig, because I do believe me. And I've got to say, you're a lot better off than the last complete ignoramus who tried to solve this problem, Jared Kushner. And his approach was to go to Israel and be very, very close and friendly to Israel and have meetings with Israel without inviting Palestine. But it doesn't matter, man, because the United Nations would come in

and would set up these separate territories. I don't think you're following what I'm saying, guys. There's different areas in this one space where they, like, this is the Jewish area, this is the Arab area, and then they would share Jerusalem. I'm sure they could share just one city. Yeah, yeah. I still think you're not listening to me because it's my solution. It's very simple.

I mean, let me just throw a hypothesis at you, okay? What would happen if, hypothetically speaking, a group in the Palestinian area, let's call them Hamas, fired rockets at Israel, but then Israel also launched air strikes back and tensions mounted up. I'm sure this wouldn't happen in reality. I don't think it would work in my idea, because you see there are these separate areas

put together, like a crushed together here in this, and it's done by the United Nations. I think you might have missed that part. Because, I mean, the United Nations are famous for completely solving problems around the world. I mean, in many ways, it's hard to tell, actually, who has looked to more for flawless solutions, me or the United Nations. I've got a good idea as well, which is that the US would back the UN in making sure that everyone acted in a peaceful manner. That's like an honest broker. Yes, and not veto any resolutions.

We should put some things in, like, maybe we could ban. hypothetically speaking, six-day wars. That kind of thing could be banning. I think we could solve this problem. Giant border walls could be just not a thing that was possible. Yeah, that's good, yeah. And that if you live in a place which happens to keep on being bombed, you're allowed to build bomb shelters.

Because that could reduce the amount of fatalities. If when, hypothetically speaking, we put together this first UN thing, if we go to you, we're going to move you from where you currently live and give you a new house. we say to people, you can't then take that new house off them 80,100 years down the track. Yeah, oh, look, I think you've actually solved the middle. I mean, I...

Yes, I... Suck it, Kushner. Either that or you've proven that this segment is never, ever going to work. I think the next thing you need to do is fix craigs full of solutions. We'll check back on this in a year, and I bet we say that I've solved it. Break.

The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. Now, Charles, one of our very good friends is here, Zoe Norton Lodge, did Radio Chaser with us back in the day, and I'm sure she's as excited as we are about this brand new daily version of The Chaser Report. Hello, Zoe. Hi, Dom. Hi, Charles. How are you going?

So what do you think of our new daily format? Well, look, to be honest, I'm constantly. of coming on as a little bit of an intervention. I feel of a strong need to counsel you in the strictest possible terms not to do this. We've already signed the deal, Zoe. We can't stop. Okay. We've committed for two years.

Okay. Well, my first question, how familiar are you guys with units of time? Do you understand how often daily comes around? Well, it did strike me because we did. show yesterday and I thought oh well that was quite fun and then doing it again today did make me go gosh that's quite a lot of work like twice in a row yeah I've also spent just about every waking minutes since midday yesterday working on the podcast um so that the pitch of it'll only take a short amount of time each day to pump it out we're not quite there yet but

I still believe in the dream Zoe okay okay look I'm guys look I know you have done this sort of thing before did radio chase and I can understand why on the surface you'd think of that as like a positive um in you positive for you but you know I did this daily radio show with you guys for about a year you remember um yeah okay and so the entire shift from memory was about four hours and it included a one hour lunch break and the show itself which was an hour was like more than half of that was songs and ads so we're talking about like 20 minutes of content a day yeah if that yeah Yeah, and it's 3 p.m. That was a full-time gig.

Now, Charles, how often did Dom complain that he was tired? Well, every day. I mean, every minute, really. Right, right? And how often did Dom desperately try to leave to get lunch? Now, bear in mind, the shift started at midday, so we didn't have to do anything in the morning. Yeah, that is true, isn't it?

Because he would just disappear, wouldn't he? Yeah, I did. I did. It was important creative prep for the show while having lunch. Yeah, so you struggled quite a lot with a four-hour shift, one hour of which was a lunch break and about 20 minutes of which was actual work. Now, Dom, when we did this show, how often was Charles completely MIA because he was off on another project,

possibly in direct competition with the show? Oh, yeah, that did happen quite often. But not as often as the times that he turned up drunk and unprepared. Now, okay, so now, just to remind, this show is called Radio Chaser. Now, from memory, there's about 12,000 members of the Chaser, right? Yeah. And yet I had to step in pretty much every single day because you could never get quorum. I mean, do you guys even like each other?

No, we hate each other. Right. Especially Dom. He's the worst. We're trapped in a marriage because Charles had a good idea. 22 years ago and since then no one has had any good ideas except maybe Craig. No one else has. So I don't even know what they were doing.

They were too busy. I mean, Chris and Andrew, they definitely weren't doing anything that was a worthwhile creative production. Let's be clear. They just didn't want to come in. Well, okay. All right. So I just want to play a little game, okay?

Okay. So Charles, I want you to describe the attributes of someone who would be ideal to do a daily podcast. Well, you want someone who's very charismatic. You want them to be very organized, very energetic, and someone who's just very funny off the cuff so that you can just have everything done very quickly. Shall I show myself out? Okay.

Now, Carl, I would like you to describe Dom. Available? He's very available. His grumpiness has become less of a problem. As I've done more, my therapy, I've learnt to deal with his grumpiness over the years. Okay, Dom, and what do you think are the ideal qualities of someone doing a daily podcast? I think consistent and reliable. Someone who you know will always be there, will have done their homework.

And basically, when someone says, I'm going to do this thing and be there on the dot, you know that's going to happen. oh and sobriety is another thing okay cool and how would you describe charles um as the person who signed the contract see you charles i'm out of here okay guys this is obviously such a terrible idea i feel a bit sick for you that you've committed to it so just in cases anywhere we can get you out of it i've done a little bit of research about some other jobs you guys could do oh yeah yeah so yeah so just so charles start with you charles so with your kind of frenetic energy and your obsession with, like, chasing the next big thing and abandoning a project midway through.

I've come up with some ideas, okay? Yeah. Have you considered selling timeshares to vulnerable people? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, that sounds good. Okay, well, you could consider trying to invent a new type of cryptocurrency. I was thinking crypto, Charles. It's technically detailed which Charles is very good at and completely volatile and unreliable.

Yeah, and Dom, Dom, you haven't. gotten you just with your sort of, um, you know, lack of interest in putting in any effort and your general state of being tired all the time and your obsession of whether or not it's lunch at all times. I've got some jobs for you. Oh, please. I thought you could be a mat. Yeah, I thought you could try being a mattress tester. I could be the new captain snooze. Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe you could get a gig washing, washing, I thought, one very old dog. Look, to be honest, just watching myself is enough of a challenge at the moment. One very old dog who's very small would have to be.

And doesn't poo because Dom won't pick up the poo. Zowie, these have been very helpful contributions. I think next time we might ask you before we sign the contract. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you reckon you guys are going to go ahead with it or it's too late, isn't it? We have to. It's too like.

Actually, Nisa, can you look into, because you did the checkout for a while? didn't you? Can you look into ways to get out of contracts that you've already signed? Charles, I'm sorry if we put you to air on Edison. You'll break the contractors in about four minutes. Yeah, okay, that's fair enough. Thanks, I think, Zoe. You're welcome, guys.

Same time next week? Yeah, yeah, definitely. We'll be here. We have to be. The Chaser Report. Less news more often. That is it for today's Chaser Report. But you can do us a favor by jumping on our.

Apple Podcasts and doing a review of the show. And Charles, we've had some issues with Apple Podcasts. They haven't managed to list the new episode. But do you think that's really a problem? Like the Apple Podcasts, I understand it, is only like 85% of the market in Australia. So not being on Apple Podcasts. It just makes us more exclusive.

Very exclusive. Yeah, yeah. So frankly, if you're listening to this point, you're probably related to us. But that's okay. We'll get it sorted out later in the week. You can find more at chaser.com. You can follow us on Twitter, on Facebook, on TikTok or on Instagram. Our gear is courtesy of road microphones and we're part of the ACAST creator network.