The Chaser Report - Ethical Dilemmas of a 12 Year Old | Angus Firth

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Child labor is not an ethical dilemma for Chaser Pty Ltd. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal 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. Hang on, Charles. It's not just us today. There's seems to be a third, smaller person in the room. That's right. For the first time this year on the podcast, please welcome my 12-year-old son, Angus Fir. Hello, how's everybody going? Charles, we didn't quite talk about what this was going to be. What's going on?

Is it bringing your 12-year-old son to work day? Has he got some thoughts on Australian politics to contribute to the mix? We used to have ethical dilemmas of a 9-year-old. Oh, yes, on radio back when that was the thing we did. Yeah. Yeah, so he's now 12. And so I thought, why don't we have, revive, because everyone loves a reboot. Oh, yes, sure, yeah.

So why don't we revive the segment? Why don't we revive that, but for updated to be, you know, ethical delimals of a 12-year-old? Heaven forbid, we come up with a new idea for a segment. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore? FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month.

Certain conditions apply. Details at FIS.C. Okay, now, Angus, I believe you've got some ethical dilemmas that you would like to raise with us. Yeah, I've only got three until I go to bed. It's 6.30 right now. 6.30 p.m. 17th of May, 2023. Are we still trying to maintain the fiction that we get up very early in the morning and record these at 4 a.m.? Yeah, Angus, you've just destroyed the myth.

What we actually pretend is that we get up at 4 a.m. each day and record them on the 18. fresh. That's right. So that's the first ethical dilemma resolve. That was wrong and Angus is telling the truth. Okay. Okay. So what is your first ethical dilemma? Okay. So the first, all three are would you rather questions. Okay.

We just do one for the time. Okay. Question one. Would you rather have the ability to see 10 minutes into the future or 150 years into the future? What a great question. Well, I mean, look, if you're listening, you can just skip forward 10 minutes. That's absolutely. if we can work out what the third ethical dilemma is by that point.

Oh, that's really interesting. See, I think 10 minutes would definitely be more useful. You'd make a lot more money out of money. You would make a lot of money. Imagine the markets. Yeah. You'd just, well, maybe that's Warren Buffett's secret superpower. My God, you would actually make money out of crypto.

If you could see 10 minutes into the future. It was the only possible way to do it, as far as I'm aware. Or, I mean, even Lotto. Lotto would totally work 10 minutes. Yeah, Melbourne. cup you'd become a legend um no also would an awkward conversations would be so brilliant when your boss brings you into a room and says look there's just a few things

I need to raise um you could work out whether to say look you know what don't bother I'm out of here uh or just go along you would know but you'd be able to see um you know look there's complaints about what a smart ass you are because you always predict things yeah 10 minutes in the future right that's really um you'd know opinion poll was It's 10 minutes before he went else. You'd be like, goes to...

Oh, you'd be Peter Van Onslin. Go to votes? You'd be... Actually, just thinking about it, Peter Van Onslan would be a sort of crypto bro, wouldn't he? Like, I'd imagine he'd dabble a man. He absolutely would. And he probably fancies himself flutter at the Melbourne Cup.

And he does the news poll 10 minutes beforehand. Actually, that's what you could do. You'd become a news corp journalist. You could destroy gambling. If you had that ability, you could send every casino bank. bankrupt, every lottery, every, that all have to pay out. You donate all the money to charity, or just keep it.

I think you'd be assassinated. No, but you wouldn't be assassinated. Because you'd see it coming. It's perfect. So, okay, so there's plenty of arguments for the 10 minutes in advance. Yeah. The 150 years, though. The whole point is, it would be fascinating.

It would be, imagine how good your sci-fi would be. Everyone would say, you know, Angus Firth came out with the incredibly visionary books that predicted exactly what's going to happen. Yes. They'd call him the maestro. It would be like Van Gogh, though, wouldn't it? You'd die a pauper. Yeah.

Because everyone would go, these are stupid. But in 150 years. Yeah. What do you mean hover trains? Yeah. What do you mean it's the same as it was in 2024? Hang on a second. Can I ask a follow-up question, Angus?

In 150 years time, broadly speaking, is the world going to be far more terrible than it is now because it strikes me that there's a very high chance that in 150 years you'd be looking into an absolute living hell that would be miserable. Well, my theory is is that everything will be grown out

and there'll be vines on everybody's houses and the air would just be like lymphins. Oh, right. What's linfinns? Like lichens or something? Very polluted. Oh, so it's a dystopia. So in 150 years' time

and then what you would do... I mean, that's the voice of the youth of Australia, I think that's And Angus Counts is one of the more hopeful Yeah, I mean We talked earlier in the week on the podcast, Angus, about how 70 years ago, I didn't know this,

70 years ago, was the first prediction of climate change, which was completely accurate. So even with the extra 80 years of notice with these predictions, people would ignore you. Oh, yeah, you'd give it a horrifying prediction that was completely accurate.

You would be the greater Tunberg. You'd be completely accurate, completely right, completely ignored. How dare you? It doesn't get you anywhere. Yes, yes. No, 10 minutes for sure. Ten minutes for sure.

I love how we literally take the sort of vast and money-grubbing, horrible option that it appeals not to our curiosity, but to our greed. Is that what we've been reduced to, don't you? It does reveal that, but it also reveals the very high certainty, the close to inevitability of the world being awful in 150 years. And frankly, we've chosen to react to. that knowledge by doing a flippant podcast rather than actually working hard to try and reverse this. But yeah, I think I'd rather know less. So 10 minutes please, Angus.

Yeah, look, I'll bet on 10 minutes. Can I bet on there? Have you got a right answer? Well, 75% agree with you two. Oh, wow! Okay, great. Okay, second question. Would you rather have telekinesis, in brackets, the ability to move things

with your mind? I don't know if they'll be very useful. Or, telepathy, the ability to read minds. So move things with your minds or read minds. Can I move hearts with my mind? No, just physical objects. You cannot.

All right, fine. No, well, but surely if you could read minds, you could work out what she was thinking and therefore move her heart. Oh. Because you know what... Hang on, I think, isn't there a scientific document on this? Isn't there a Mel Gibson movie called...

Oh, what women want. So, given that there is that that exists, surely, if the answer were to that question, was ever Mel Gibson. It doesn't make telepathy seem like a very good option. How big can the objects be that you can move with mine? They can be in any size. Well, the maximum size would have to be the size of the Eiffel Tower.

Okay. That's pretty heavy. Yeah, that's pretty good. That's very useful. You could get a job in construction. You could, imagine the mining you could do. Gina Reinhart would hire you in seconds. You could just completely...

Just to move her around. Actually, that's true. You could... You win every fight. Right, because you could move people, presumably, at this point. Yes, you could. Look, my immediate reaction was definitely telepathy because actually, knowing, walking into a room and knowing what everyone's thinking.

It could be great, but it would give you very low self-esteem, though. It would be awful. The thing is, you'd be brilliant in any situation. But to the point where people would deeply just trust you. Yes. And that you would know that. Yes. But no, I think I...

Oh, it would be awful. Yeah, I mean, I wonder through, I would. I wandered through life based on the illusion that I don't know what people think about this. We're choosing this shallow options here, aren't we? We're going telekinesis. Yeah, we can just move rocks around. I think we, that's one way to put it. But also, what if we could assemble things for the good of humanity?

For instance, the pyramids. Maybe the pyramids occurred because somebody said yes to this question and got telekinesis, and that's how they managed to build the pyramids. Maybe we could build giant artworks. Maybe we could build a stadium in Tasmania, the most useful thing in the entire world. That's great. Okay, well, telekinesis is the answer. But you could end wars too, couldn't you?

Oh, yeah, but you wouldn't borrow. And you go to Ukraine and just move all the Russians back to Russia. They'd be boring, though. I think build stadiums. Yeah, no, that was a bit of theory, wasn't it? So have you made your final answer? Yeah, telekinesis. We actually agree unusually.

Charles and I agree on what. It's generally, I think it's because Charles and I now, in our mid-40s. We've learned we've had enough disappointment in our lives to protect ourselves. Well, I think, yeah, in my youth, I would have chosen the more noble options. And now I'm cynical enough to know, no, no, no, no, no, just go with the fun stuff. Yeah, nobilities, there's no upside in nobility. Ask Greta Thunberg.

How dare you? I don't want insight into what other people are thinking. I just want to wallow in my own insight. Blissful ignorance plus moving stuff. Yep, I'm with you, Charles. Okay, so what's your final answer? And you? Telekinesis.

Okay, so 45% of other people agree with you. Oh, do you know what I think of that 55%? It's not very positive. Good joke. Thank you. Okay, final question. And also people who are listening to this, just think. Okay.

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I'm ready. Okay. Try not to say, ew, yuck. This is when you made up yourself. Yeah, try not to say, ew, yuck. I don't have survey data on this one. Okay. Okay.

Okay, so would you rather stub your toe and get major surgery and you're still awake while the surgery happens? Right. Or would you eat a little tiny wart? Would you eat a little tiny wart? Or have surgery on your toe and be awake while that happened? But by the way, we don't have data on this. So what you need to do is go to Apple Podcasts, write a review and choose the ward or the surgery.

Just tell us, five-star review, please, for Angus's sake. He's young, he's a kid, come on. Give him five stars. And then tell us which one it would be. That's really tough. So this is the genesis of this whole segment was, this is a question that Angus posed to me yesterday. And it made me go, we have to bring back this segment just to find out, just to work out. So the other two were warm-ups.

This is the original product of Vangis's mind. Yes. So what is it? Is it painful surgery? How long does the surgery last? It's about 10 to 20 minutes. Oh, okay. Versus eating a wart.

Now, can I just say, before we go any further, can I just ask those assembled at the table? Do any of us know what a wart taste like? I mean, I can imagine it's not very pleasant, but maybe they're lovely. Well, I actually didn't I had them. What? Why? Because they were annoying. Did you think that that would make them go away forever?

Yeah, I thought scratching them would get them away, but that just made them very contagious. It just made them worse and spread further. Do you have internal warts inside your body now? No, but I wish I did. Okay. So what do they taste like? They taste like gone off corn. Oh.

Oh, I think kind of just pussy. No. It's like snosh. God off corn. Yeah. That doesn't sound very good. I can see why warts haven't taken off as a food stuff. Well, this is very complicated.

I must say, I think one of the things is do you want to be the guy who ate a whart? Like, is that... Well, this is my theory. It's a show, Kay, you have the excruciating pain. And that ends, he'll always be the person who ate a wart once. Although in Angus's case, that horse is bullshit. Sorry, Angus.

I only confessed it on a podcast now, which is very unwise. And chat GPT, presumably, within a week or two, if people ask, who has eaten a wart? It will come up with the answer, Angus Firf. Forever. So, I mean, it's a form of fame. I guess that's, you're probably the only person listening who has.

How painful is it, Angus? Is it the worst feeling I've ever felt in my entire life? Am I just in agony? For the surgery, yes. Right. So no anaesthetics, no nothing. I'm just in agony. 20 minutes of pain.

But off corn. But off corn. That taste. Plus presumably you'd backwash. You'd have a little bit of, oh, oh. And does that happen? Does the wart taste come back? No, it's just a one-time thing.

Does it come back in your nightmares? Do you wake up screaming going, off corn? No. I mean, I did have a nightmare about off corn. And it said, warts are inside your body, literally. And the gone-off corn was covered in tomato sauce, and I had to eat it. I mean, so I think about excruciating pain. My understanding is that the worst pain humans can feel, generally speaking,

is childbirth. Childbirth, yes. And as a bunch of men sitting around the table, yes. And I'd like to say that, well, if some humans can endure that for much longer than 10 minutes, yes. Then surely we can put up with 10 minutes of agony so we don't have. to eat the cream of corn.

But the problem is... But the whole advantage of being a man is you don't have to... That's the thing. But then it's going to be being men, we have no idea what that's like. Being a man, we should eat the warts! Eat the warts! I'm going to eat the warts. I think I'll take the pain just so that when someone tells me a harrowing story

of what it was like to have a 12-hour labour, I'd be like, oh yeah, look, I had this 10-minute thing once. It was terrible. If it was anything like that, I'd tell you, it probably wasn't. as bad as my experience. You're 18-hour excruciating labour. Yeah. Yeah, but let me tell you about my toe.

I think I want to be that annoying person. I don't go with that. I think you probably already are, aren't you? It's entirely possible. Okay, Angus, so what we're going to do is we're going to ask the listeners to give us a five-star review on Apple Boggs. Yeah, because he's just a kid, right? Just be kind. It's for Angus, not for us.

And then tell us the results for this ethical dilemma because we don't have any statistical data on this. Yeah. wart or pain or surgery, ward or surgery, and give us the reasons why. What would you do? I would eat a wart while having the surgery. And they say,

just bite down on this to make the pain easier and it's a wart. That's my son. Thank you. Angus Firth, thank you very much. Thank you. I'm going to go to bed now and I'll see you all tomorrow. Don't bite off any warts on your way. Well, Charles, thank you for exploiting your child for content.

I can bring my one-year-old next time if you like to hear a child saying, data, data, data are over over again. Ethical dilemmas of a one-year-old would be superb. It would be brief, but it would be original. Well, it would be, wouldn't it be like, Apple or Orange? Milk or scream. Milk or scream, is it?

Well, yeah, what is a one-year-old? Milk or scream, and then the answer is Puma Pants. Yeah. Every time. Every time. It actually sounds exactly like if you ask GPT to sort of do a script for the Chaser Report. Yes.

Or you on a big. Night out. Our gear is from Road. We're part of the iconic class network. Keep those pants clean. Yeah. Catch you next time. Thank you for your patience.

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