The Chaser Report - Paper Straws Will Save Us

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

Charles, Gabbi and Dom wonder whether the new IPCC Report on climate change has taken account of the important minor lifestyle changes we've all made. Plus, NSW finally has a lockdown exit date from a fairly unlikely source, Chaser writer John has issue with our listener survey, and Charles channels his ever-growing lockdown angst into a halfpipe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of The Chaser Report is sponsored by the IPCC report on the impending climate apocalypse. The good news is that the climate is so bad that worrying about the pandemic now just seems churlish. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is the Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the Chase Report for Tuesday, the 10th of August. Isn't the uncertainty of this lockdown terrible Charles and Gabby just drags on and on and on with no end in sight? Well, there are some. Uncertainty, is it the certainty that around 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. each day, you're going to have a little bit of a cry. Yeah, I'd buy that. There's also the certainty that at around 10pm or

11pm each day, you're going to go to the fridge. That's a certainty. Yes, that's so true, isn't it? But look, people have criticised the government for not being clear about when this is going to end and what's going to happen, and they keep suggesting it might end at the end of August, and we know that's not true. But finally, I'm pleased to say we have certainty through the most important government communication channel. They've actually let us know what's going on at last. Have you missed it? Right. So what is it going to be? Is it going to be... Take a guess at how we've achieved this amazing clarity today. Oh, it'll be to do with the mining industry. It is even stupider. What happened was the police minister David Elliott had a bit of a chat with Peter Fitzsimon's

who published their conversation and he was so frank that the people thought it was actually a parody. I read it and I couldn't work out if it was supposed to be funny or not. Wait, is this our best friend, David Elliott? David Elliott, lockdown diaries, David Elliot. You're very same. You've got me. Hookline and sinker dumb. I'm in. So what he said was, on current projections with the line of vaccination rates going up and if transmission rates come down over the next fortnight, it looks like they'll meet at a satisfactory level before grand final day on October the 3rd. It's going to end

in the beginning of October. It's all about grand final day. It was the caveat, though, if the trend continues with vaccination rates. Because the one thing that we know is the vaccination rates get harder and harder, the higher you go. Don't ruin this for me, Charles. Don't ruin this for me. Peter Fitzsibbitt knows.

David Elliott knows where this is going to end. The funniest thing about this is that this one moment of clarity that they've never given us at any point in this lockdown, it wasn't even the main point of the article. The main point of the article was David Elliott absolutely unload. Loading on Brian Houston from Hillsong, who he called an ungrateful twat. Well, he loves unloading. That's David Elliott's thing. It was great.

I want David Elliott's diaries back. Well, he's got something even better. He's actually determining policy now. He was calling him an ungrateful twat because they gave him five-star hotel quarantine, and he just calls him just a suburban preacher. What, Brian Houston? Yes. I mean, I have a few more words for him than suburban preacher.

Yeah. So, I mean, I must say. I just love this because it is so refreshing to see a senior government figure actually telling the truth. I was so excited about how this guy was telling the truth and just finally laying it on the line. But then he stopped. Fitzsimons asked him if he wanted to be Premier and he said,

no, no, no, I've got the job that I want right now. No one believes that. No one believes that. So I hate David Elliott again, I'm afraid. But I mean, it's also refreshing to see somebody who's been offered a job in politics and knows when to stop. Imagine I'm just being like, actually, no, I'm good. I'm not competent enough.

I'm not good enough. He said that as well. He said, I've seen Gladys and Mike Baird and I've seen how sharp their minds are. I can't do that. I love this guy. We should have him on the podcast. Coming up on the show, I'm going to talk about the new IPCC report that came out overnight, talking about the climate apocalypse. Plus, John from our team thinks that there's a problem with our listener survey.

That can't possibly be true. Plus, what else have we got on the show? Headlines with Rebecca Dana-Muno. Today is officially the final day of lockdown. Experts are praising the government's radical attempt to make sure everyone is at home on census night by inventing a fake virus and locking everyone down. Once the forms are returned on Wednesday morning,

Australians should be free to gather outside again. Sky News has officially deregistered their popular Pornhub account following news of their channel being unbanded from YouTube. A spokesperson from the media organisation said that they no longer needed to upload on Pornhub since YouTube has welcomed them back and agreed to stop censoring videos of massive dicks. Iranian Olympic karate champion Gangeshadei becomes one of the world's first unconscious gold medalists, having won his medal after being knocked out. This trend follows the banning of alcohol following the Islamic Revolution in 1979,

as a record number of Iranian alcoholics have signed up as Olympic athletes, looking for more creative ways to pass out. That's the latest news you really can't trust. I'm Rebecca Deunamuno. Today's episode brought to you by the IPCC report on the impending climate apocalypse. Sure, we've destroyed the planet,

but it did make a bunch of dudes unbelievably rich, so there's that. Now, overnight, the IPCC, which is the International Panel on Climate Change, which is a UN body, released its report, which is the first update that it's had in about five years about the state of the planet. Are we fine? What do you reckon it said? Do you reckon it said everything's heading in the right direction?

Yeah. Yeah. I reckon it said that the Great Barry O'Eaf is supposed to be white. They talked to Pauline Hanson and she convinced him the dumbest. It was all rubbish. That's what I'm doing. Yeah. No, actually, it turns out that we're on the path to climate apocalypse,

and we're definitely all going to die in a fiery inferno. And along the way, there'll be these massive weather events that destroy all our bush and our air. It's really, I really like coming on the podcast when Charles has a segment that he wrote. Do you notice that dumb? Like, I love knowing that when I, When I tune in to listen to Charles, I know it's going to be an uplifting, beautiful, heartwarming conversation.

That's true. And in fact, I remember the last segment like this, Charles, which means that all this is moot, because we'll all be dead already from the Lambda variant of COVID. No, I've got some good news because I think actually the IPCC has got it wrong. Oh. What do you mean? The experts who spent five years studying exact every last detail of the climate,

you reckon on the top of your head that they're wrong, do you? Yes, yes, all these. scientists, I mean, what did scientists know? But also, I think that they've ignored, because I briefly flicked through the report. And there is not a single mention of the fact that the straws from McDonald's are now made out of cardboard. Oh.

Not made out of plastic. That's an oversight. That's an oversight. They haven't taken that into account when they're calculating the climate apocalypse. Of course. And not a single mention of the, Very widespread prevailants of wooden forks. Right.

So your reasoning for why a study regarding weather events ruining the world as we know it comes down to whether or not we're using plastic sporks and plastic straws. Well, not just that. Not just that. Sorry. They didn't mention at all the fact that I never asked for napkins when I get takeaway. Oh, well done. Never.

Craig Rucastles, step out of the way. We've got a new wildlife warrior over here. Yeah, no, when the Uber driver delivers to Charles's house and uses all that carbon to drive there, you never have the extra cutlery, do you? No, but Dom, nowadays, a lot of the Uber drivers, they aren't driving cars, they're driving those little bicycles. Again, another thing that the IPCC, just frankly,

has not taken into account. And the fact that they're saving so much money on underpaying all of those Uber drivers is putting more money into the hands of climate activists. Charles. Exactly. Uber drivers can't emit much carbon because they can't afford anything because they're so underpaid. It's perfect. Charles, have the IPCC taken into account the way people like to put at the bottom of their emails, please consider the environment before printing this email. I mean, admittedly that in some cases makes it take a second sheet of paper

just to get that one line out. But a lot of the time, that's got to be having an impact, doesn't it? Oh, I think you're right. I think there's all these areas that the IPCC with their highfalutin, you know, oh, this many coal mines, this many gas plants, burning, burning, burning, they've forgotten the details. What about Earth hour? Yes, Earth hour. My sense was always that if things were starting to get serious to the climate, we just have a second Earth hour at some other point during the year and we'd sort it all out.

I actually, this is no word of a lie. I genuinely believe once the Earth gets to the point of only half apocalypse where, like, you know, there's going to be a curfew on everybody. You can't go out past a certain date. The government in action at that time are going to rephrase it like, Earth night. And like everyone's just going to grow up thinking, oh, we do it because we want to, not because we have to to live.

And I'm calling that now. It is 2021, the 9th of August. And in 60 years, if you find me, if I haven't already euthanized myself, I want to be proven correct. Yes, it'll be every night is Earth night. Yeah. Finally, as you'd say, they do actually mention the Great Barrier Reef in their report. Do they?

Approvingly, it turns out. It's beautiful colours from white to white. But they didn't take into account the fact that it actually isn't dying because that that decision got overturned. Ha! Oh, so it's not dying because a person said that it's not. Yeah, because Australia lobbied and they voted that it wasn't dying after all. Oh, well, that's nice.

Yes. It's nice to hear, isn't it? I mean, I think the Environment Minister in another week or two is just going up there to brief the coral polyps on that decision and then they'll stop dying on mass. Yes, exactly. I mean, it's going to be a great moment. Yeah, we've all had a vote.

Sorry, you're not dead. Today's episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by the IPCC report on the impending climate apocalypse. Sure, the environment is bad and catastrophic weather events are going to become a regular part of life, but it does make terrific television. Okay, so in this conversation we have Charles, we have Gabby, and we have John, who's a writer for The Chaser, and we have my daughter who's performing the song Let It Go from Frozen in the background. So this conversation brought to you by lockdown.

We're all in different places, of course. John, you have a concern. Yeah, so, Charles, there's been a listener survey. Do you know much about how this has gone up? Yeah, yeah, I put that out beginning of last week, and it's because, you know, we've got this new podcast going, and we want to, We want to find out who's listening to it, who could potentially listen to it, and sort of know their aid and their demographic and that sort of stuff, so that we can tell advertisers here, this is a really great place to advertise. So if you do want to do the survey, you should check it out.

It's available at the Chaser website, and it's a little Google form, and you can win a $50 gift card if you do fill it out. Hang on, is that a $50 gift card for our web store? Because if so, maybe not so. No, it's a proper gift card It's like a visa gift card I just wanted to double check if Charles knew about it Because I want to see if he had take responsibility for it

Yeah, yeah What's happened? What's he done? Why, what? Before I, well, I'm not going to like just be mean about it But no, do it Well, just first, Dom and Gabby If you were to do like a short, quick survey To see what kind of demographic

How many questions would you ballpark a quiz being? Oh, like, I don't know, five? Five, six, seven maybe, tops. Yeah. about 40. 40? Are you joking? No, I went through and counted every question.

There's 40 questions. Charles, no one's going to do this survey. Look. Well, no, but once you've got them, you want to know everything about them. What's the point of asking them five questions how they scratch the surface? Isn't it more likely that people will see

the endless list of questions to go, yeah, I can do without the 50 bucks. You're working at a rate of 1.01 cents a question. Sorry, that was bad math. A dollar a question. John, I do admire that you found out a way of making it even more work by going back and counting the questions. But anyway, right, so that's an issue.

I didn't quite realize, because ACAST, who are our podcast network, they gave us the template. And then I was supposed to edit it, but I looked at it briefly. And I sort of went, oh, yeah, that'll... Oh, so it's ACAST. It's not really my responsibility. Right. I mean, I did go through it, but, you know.

Just a check. So you're on the editing job, and you're an editor. at The Chaser. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Managing editor, I believe, is the term Charles prefers these days. And you didn't read through it? What do you mean? I did read through it.

I did. I totally read through it. Charles, how many times do you think the name of the podcast is mentioned in the quiz? Uh-oh. Because the answer is zero. Oh, my God. No, no, but it sort of says our podcast. That could be anybody's podcast.

It's like you blanked on the name of the podcast and just... It's in the name, Charles. Look, I think it's colloquial. It's like, you know, we all know what we're talking about. We do, but somebody who stops us across this bloody 40 question personality quiz isn't going to know. The census has more questions. But on the bright side, they may think they've stumbled onto the Hamish and Andy survey. We might get more desirable people filling it out.

Well, how we go through some of the questions and we can see like how well the questions go. So the first question is quite good. Like, what is your gender, male, female, non-binary, or prefer not to say? there was a bit of a hiccup on the second question being how old are you yeah because the original age range went up in a year was 18 to 24 25 to 29 35 to 39 and then going up in increments of five yeah yeah so actually it's interesting because somebody did pick that up actually people started complaining oh my age is not there right and then I noticed oh yeah actually like it was at 30 to 30

35 was not included. But I included that. I actually went back and changed the form. It was after 450 people had answered the survey that I'd done that. Hang on, are you saying 450 people have filled out this survey, despite it having 40 questions? See, people, our listenership is engaged. We have people who love us. I don't know if that's true.

Maybe there aren't enough questions. Charles, did you edit it this morning? because the next question is different to what it looked like last night Oh go on expose it though John And it's also not been fully fixed yet Oh really? Oh no Did Charles try to fix it?

Did Charles try and fix it? So the next question is where do you live Which also had complaints immediately when the tweet went out Because it splits up all the states into metro regional areas And then it said other Oh, my God. So it missed Northern Territory at ACT. Did we include Tasmania?

Because that's the other one that wasn't included initially. You've hit on some of the more forgettable places, to be fair. But am I just getting the sense that, so we scheduled yesterday to have a conversation where John gave his feedback about the form. Did you go and fix it before the conversation? No, well, because I had a conversation with him about this conversation yesterday. Oh, my God. Just preparing what it would be.

And he mentioned some of the things and I thought, oh, that is actually to fix that up because, yeah. So word to the listener, Charles isn't ever putting on this facade of bumbling idiot. He actually just is one.

Also, as a writer, I want to point out now to all the tweets that say whenever there's a spelling mistake or grammatical mistake that we need to stop letting interns edit, that's not what causes those problems. Judging by Charles is wonderful, but amazingly error-filled article on the shot.

early this week. We do need a proofreader. I've got several people to proofread that. Who are the people you're getting to proofread? Oh, they're not very good at proofreading. I don't know, they all went to public schools. That's the problem. We've had 1192 responses to this survey.

Wow. And look, and hardly any of them live in ACT anyway. In fact, none of them live in. Well, that wasn't an option until yesterday. What useful information have we gleaned from this survey so far? Well, I thought we could skip to some of the questions that actually seem like they're trying to find out about our listeners, so we're not going through all 40 questions. There's a lot, most of the questions are how, like, to what extent do you agree or disagree? Some are pretty normal, like, do you like celebrity endorsements, do you like it when brands ask about sales, etc., which makes sense when you're looking for advertising information?

There are some that are a bit weird. Like, there's a question asking, do the benefits of receiving? receiving ads outweigh the fears I might have of being tracked online by big organisations. What? I like the idea that these two negatives cancancel each other out. Yeah, yeah, I love it. It's just sort of utilitarian approach to... Do they, um, did we survey listeners about how many minutes they enjoy of the podcast

being divided to meetings that probably could have been handled internally? Yeah, when an intern comes on this show, it's actually... actually not to be on the show. It's just to discuss a HR issue that they weren't able to discuss before. That's right. That's the only way to get Charles to listen to us. What would you have preferred, John? Would you have preferred some sort of like, you know,

writers mini essay about the perils of ad tracking, you know, discuss? Is that what you wanted in this survey? I don't think it's going to be very useful to advertisers. We want to be able to make it. You know, our listeners say, oh, no, we don't care about advertising tracking. We love it. But that's what we want, isn't it? Put your business head on.

You want to track our fans? We don't track our fans. We're not competent enough. Bit of a weird thing to ask them, isn't it? Well, no, no, but it would be like, you know, in the future if we... What? Need to docks some people. Oh, reviews are looking pretty grim.

Maybe I'll just send letters out to these people's personal addresses and ask how they're children are doing. Can we just appoint John executive director of listeners of listeners surveys and just be done? Yeah. That's right. Yeah, you can have the job. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you can be executive director. Is there a pay rise? No way.

There's their pay cut. I'm actually, I'm not paying myself anything at the moment. The company's going broke. It's a total disaster. That's why we need this fucking survey. Well, maybe that's why the survey should be good. There is one question that kind of makes sense for us to ask

based on the common look of most of our guests and hosts. One question, do you support diversity? I suppose diversity. Strongly agree to strongly disagree scale. What's going to happen if everyone says strongly disagree, Charles? What happens? Well, we'll stop having Dom on. Look, can I tell you, 26 people out of 1,000 or 1,200 surveyed strongly disagree with I support diversity,

and 37 say they disagree with I support diversity. Great. And only half of them agree. Only half of them strongly agree. I'm concerned for the strongly agree people. Yeah, right, okay. You just want a little bit of diversity. Okay, yeah.

So I've just also realised that there's no link to this survey on the, the chaser website I will I'll put that up there so by the time this rave goes to air there will be a link on the website go and do the survey

we thought this would be a good thing to include because we felt that it might be a call to action people to do the survey I now understand that this is neither a call to action and nor do we need it to be because thousands of people have filtered out already this is a weird company Okay, well go away

Everyone go back to work Don't worry He's not going to survey what we do The Chaser report Less news More often Bunnings Sydney stores Are still open for business

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internet hardware we've a huge range of hot spots and transmitters to choose from if you find a shop with a higher infection rate we'll beat it by 10% so before we go I just want to tell you about my weekend. Righto. Yeah, let's make this longer for that reason. Great. Go ahead. I don't know whether you remember, but a few weeks ago, I was talking about how the one

advantage of lockdown is that I've come up with a really good game with my kids. Oh, yeah. Which is, we go down to, there's this half pipe at the skate park. Oh, yeah. And we play what we call 3D Pong, where we have the ball. And the whole thing of the game is to actually get the ball out because it's so much fun to then slide down to go and get the ball. And it's this whole labour game, dude, all the time.

Yeah. Anyway, Friday afternoon, last Friday, it's sort of, you know, literally looking forward to just, you know, stopping work, taking the kids down, play some pong. You know, this is the one thing that makes lockdown bearable. Right. And we get down there and there is a bulldozer. I shit you not a bulldozer bulldozing the halfpipe.

They have destroyed the halfpipe. They found out about your game, you said, not on our watch. Literally the first physical game. game that I've got into with my kids in their 12 years of being on this planet. You know, where it's just like we all enjoy, the whole family goes, yes, 3D Pong. It's the only thing giving a sane in lockdown and they've destroyed it. What possible reason can they have for getting rid of a popular halfpipe? I think they listen to this podcast.

I'm feeling a little bit paranoid. I think they listen to the podcast and they're targeting me. Charles, I don't think you have to be paranoid about them listening to the podcast and then removing the half pipe for that. that reason. For instance, we did a whole segment about my loud neighbor and the music's still going on. I don't think anyone's listening to the podcast, Charles. No, he does listen to the podcast, but you can't hear it over the music.

Well, Charles, if they are listening to you, all you need to do is explain how much you hate bulldozers and how you want them to destroy the, well, there's a new skate park down the road from the half pipe, just tell them to go and destroy that and they'll do the opposite. No, it's destroyed, our dreams are destroyed. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters anymore because we're all going to do. die in a climate apocalypse anyway, so who cares? When you do die in a climate apocalypse, do you want us to scatter your ashes on a half

pipe if we can find one? Because then they'll slide down. They'll be really fun. Oh, no, wait, no, I've got it. We put your ashes in a ball. Yes. And then we bring it back. And then you lose the ball, which was the point of the game.

Yeah, lose the ball in the half pipe. Charles rests forever more. Okay, can we leave this podcast now? That's how we end it. Can we go? I must say, though, Charles, congratulations on finding a new level of bleak. I can't wait to find out what the reviews say. If you want to leave one, go to Apple Podcasts.

We appreciate it five stars, but haven't been in any stars you think. Just mention Charles's new levels of bleakness. Or a new set of rules for what's the game called? Pong. Pong. 3D Pong. Well, your body will start to pong in that tennis ball, I guarantee it. Our gears from road microphones and we're part of the ACAST Creator Network.

Catch you next episode where Charles will find a new way to milk more misery from the existence that we all share. See ya. Bye.