The Chaser Report - Podcast-Gate Is Coming For Us

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

Old podcast clips are on a rampage, taking out political heavyweights across the spectrum, which has Charles and Dom extremely concerned about the awful things they've said in the 400+ hours of this podcast. And yet they continue to tamper with this ticking time bomb.---Listen AD-FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] 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 Chase Report with Dom and Charles. And Charles, all is well in the world except of course. No. Except of course at the Carl Stefanovic podcast. Yes, exactly. Which has been mired in terrible legal disputes.

But we're not going to talk about that. We've already talked about one, for a whole episode. We had no information about it. No, I don't. And now there's all this information in juicy court filing. But we don't want to talk about that. It's so... No, because it looks like it's going to come back in some form.

Oh, really? Well, I mean, presumably when they work out the legal... Why do we keep talking about Carl Steved? He literally stepped away from the limelight. For a moment. And you gave him wanting to bring him back into the limelight. It was just meant to be a little drive-by side swipe on the way into the podcast. That's right.

No, that's it. It took debate. Much as Carl took debate. to give that lady 45% although maybe she earned it, I don't know. All I know is it's not being published. So we are now, we are actually Australia's leading podcast on Kyle Stefanovica related matters.

That's right. At the moment. Number one. Yes, yes. But today I do want to talk about podcasts, but it's a very disturbing trend, Dom, that I think is really quite dangerous and sinister and has, I think, a terrible impact on our democracy

and in particular on me. Oh, okay. Right. So the thing is... Have you been red-pilled since I saw you last? I'm just going to double-check. No, no. You haven't been ingesting in the atmosphere or anything.

This is serious. And this is like, look, let's take some heads. I'll take a few breaths. I'm starting to worry, actually. Yeah, no, no. Does anyone own 45% of this podcast or we don't know? So the thing is, I don't know whether you've noticed, but there's a growing trend in Australia.

Oh, no. To excavate all. episodes of podcasts and then use what they've flippantly said in those podcasts to bring down public figures. So it happened a few weeks ago with Albo that he went on one podcast. Oh, the melon thing. And they managed to get about 15 separate sound bites out of it that were all terrible, terrible thing.

There was the melons. Did that crowd any sort of tension diplomatically with Japan? Well, people trying to say that it did, didn't it? Formerly, Japan said nothing burger, doesn't matter. Who amongst us has not made? But diplomatically, of course Japan would say that. We don't know. Like, they would have had crisis means.

It certainly made its way to Washington, D.C. Right. And I think, especially the Republicans were using it as a bit of a battering ram against Australia for a while. Imagine. They might have cancelled Orcus because of melons. Yeah, there was Fox News, was tutting, Albo for being a misogynist. which I actually thought was sort of part and parcel of being a commentator on Vox News. I'm just processing that in light of Donald Trump going on all the Manistphere podcast.

Oh, that's right. Different rules apply. Yeah, that's right, yeah. Understood. But then just in the last few days, Pauline Hanson is being brought down by the lamestream media for comments that she made on a podcast last year, where she said that indigenous people were the most primitive people. on earth.

Right. And it's been this terrible controversy. Have you seen... I've seen the reports. And lots of sort of really quite horrible stuff that she said. But again, it's this methodology of going back and just obviously some staff in Labor, in Albo's office probably, has been charged with the responsibility of listening to every old podcast episode.

Or in a number of other, like there's a lot of other... Do we know it's Labor? There's a lot of people. We're cooking for ways to bring boys' Taylor's office. And Charles, that's why this is the first episode of the Chaser Report. We decided to launch a brand new podcast.

Be careful what you say. No, this is the whole point that I'm going to say is we've done over 1,300 episodes, Dom. I'm not confident that if a staffer trawled back through all 1,300 episodes, there wouldn't be something that taken completely out of context that was said, you know, ingest in the moment. Oh, dear.

I mean, imagine if they got onto the stuff that I've said about male paddened baldness over the years. Oh, my goodness. Like, imagine the contrary, like, there may be, like, any day it could break that we're sort of, you know, like our obsession with Bluetooth. Like, imagine, imagine, imagine, that'll be. We look fixated. Front page news. Chase the report. Obsessed with Bluetooth.

This, 1,322 episodes. And if they go way back and traw through the records when Scott Morrison was Prime Minister, they might uncover that we had no regard for one of Australia's top politicians at the time. I mean, Charles, the thing to know about that era is that there were, I mean, I think we vastly exceeded any reasonable number of car park references and jokes. Yes, exactly. That's going to be the scandal. So Charles, if you average our 1,322 episodes to date at about 20 minutes each, chat GPT tells me that is 440 hours and 40 minutes or 18 days, 8 hours and 40 minutes.

My question is, who has the Dirt Squad big enough to drawl through all that? Well, what I'm wondering is maybe we can crowdsource this. And is there a listener out there who's willing to take one to the team and go back and just do a bit of an audit of all 440 hours for us. Like literally... Why would you want anyone to do that? Start from episode one and just have a bit of a listen and report back in 440 hours.

What about that kid? What you? Listen to it. Yeah. More than anybody else in Australia. Oh, dear. Charles, I don't want to imply anything here, okay? I don't want to...

But just on current technology, do you know, is there any record of what I was thinking? about what you were saying during a lot of those 440 hours? Well, I'm sure that, you know, like large language models, like AI, could predict with a fair degree of certainty what you were thinking. Well, Charles, also with the turn to video, if we do ever really get serious about video for Chaser report. Well, we're redoing the studio this week.

We're literally about to launch video. Does that mean that eye rolls will be captured on going back? Oh, I see what you're saying. No, I see what you're saying. Get out ahead of it. But won't they be exculpary eye rolls? Exculpary, that probably will. Very good use of the word exculpary.

Thank you. Okay, I just, well, this is the fascinating thing about this, though, Charles. Yeah. Is that it's all about context and it's all about, the great thing about the Chaser Report is that anything dreadful, which I, or let's face it, you have said, is, it was just a joke. No, but that's, but see, Albo didn't, that didn't work for Albo. He said, oh, but the melons thing was just a joke.

Yes, but have you... And it was just sort of horrible and tasteless. But have you ever heard Albo issuing a joke and gone, oh, that was a joke? Like, I don't... Oh, I see, because he's not a japster. They're not a japster. But we're well-known japsters. We're satirists. We're satirists.

We're satirical projects. But I feel like comedians still get cancelled for saying untoward things. All the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just think there's got to be something that we've said about, I don't know. I mean, if they go looking for, should we just say, if they go looking for other Chaser

podcasts, they might find people on them who've been cancelled quite recently. In fact, potentially. Yeah, that's true. Just randomly. It is a concern. Well, should we talk about that? Do we want to talk about it? It is a concern.

But let me just say, okay, here's the thing that reassures me about. this. And I say this with love. Yeah. But I think that anything that you've said in, and I'm sure there's stuff in there, there's got to be completely opposite statement. Like anything you've ever said, you will have said the diametric opposite. By an equal and opposite statement here. Somewhere in the feed.

Because I'm not worried that I've said something like, you know, racist or anything like that. Like, I don't think I've probably said anything that sort of degrades women, particularly. And you're in the best. position to judge that. The people are going to go, this guy is really long-winded. This guy goes on and on and on. I'm just hoping you're going to get to the point that you raised 440 hours ago. I've been waiting for many years to actually bring it all together.

Can you please into a point? Or I'll be exposed to someone who says really obvious things. Like corruption is bad and democracy's in trouble. The weave. You're going to bring the weave over. I'm worried. I have an opposite worry, Charles. Oh, yeah.

I'm actually quite concerned that if someone does an analysis of my 440 hours and what I've said, yes. It will be established that during the whole course of Chase report, I've said almost nothing. You've provised. No opinion at all. And in many cases, you can actually hear me avoiding expressing an opinion for very sound professional resists, which, you know, are what they had to be. And so I worry that my reputation will be even flimsier than it is now.

That's right. It's quite concerning. Or maybe it's not concerning. I'm not sure. People read it listeners can make up their own judgment on that one. The Chaser Report. Less news. Less often.

Well, should we go through, do we want to just spend the last five minutes of this? Just going through a number of controversial topics and just making definitive statements about So that we can be on record saying, well, I may have said that, but actually my later statement, you know, just made a terrible error with this episode. We've made a terrible error with this episode, you know. If we've done planning, which I know is not something that you've far much evidence of in the 440 hours, but if we've done planning, yeah, this would have been the best introduction to a clip episode, right?

Like, we could have got Loughlin to trawl through all the 440 hours and find examples. Yes. But as it is, we've nearly talked for the full length of the episode. And what have we gotten to? Well, maybe. Why don't you just give you, who's going to win the next election? Oh, okay. The next election.

Okay, and this is definitive. Definitive. You can't take it back until next episode. It's going to be, I'm afraid, Paul and Hanson's One Nation. It's going to storm at home. We're talking 96th street seat majority, I'm saying. Now that's my prediction. For the Greens?

Oh, yeah. The Greens will win. the slim majority. They'll win by about three or four seats. Okay. What about, what's the Legra Spender's new party? They've only got two MPs at the moment. Yeah, the Teal Party. Yeah, the Teal Party. Community

Strong or something. Yeah. Community Independence strong is something? Community strong independence or something. In some sort of, yeah, can you? Yeah, CSI. Yeah, yeah. CSA. CSA. So, Allegra Spender's new party?

Look, I think that they're going to storm at home. They'll win with a commanding. No, they'll be in a minority government. Community Strong Australia. Yeah, Community Strong Australia. CSA, they'll be in a minority government in coalition with David Pocock, who will be the next Prime Minister. Okay.

So I think you've covered every scenario there except for a liberal victory. Sorry. Oh, that's right. They're the party. What's the name of the lady? It's that woman, isn't it? Angus Taylor. Julie Bishop?

No, Angus Taylor. Angus Taylor. Angus Taylor is still leader. He's the opposition leader. You sure it's not Andrew Hasty? Oh no, Andrew Hasty's not sure about whether. That's next. Okay, okay. So I'll make a prediction.

You better record one for Andrew Hasty. Yeah, Andrew Hasty will lead the Libs to a commanding victory at the next election. Okay. Okay, good. You're not doing an egg of a trailer one for safety? You're comfortable with that? Yeah, I'm comfortable with that, yeah. We can always do it with AI.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. And actually, Charles, this is probably where we win. It's time to confess something. What? We didn't actually do it. 440 hours of this podcast. That would be insane. Nobody would.

Yeah, no one would do that. No one would do that. But producer Loughlin, the intern who started working with us on this project in 2020 during the heights of COVID. Yes. He recorded our voices back then and has been using... He's been trying to generate AI episodes every day. That's why it was so squiffy early on.

Yeah. Yeah. I never said anything on this podcast. It was all Lachlan. We're going to have to get rid of him at some point, aren't we? We're going to have to get... Yeah, we're going to have to step up and do it ourselves. Is this Loughlin at the moment?

Is Loughlin... Yeah, of course, this is Lachlan. I mean, to be fair, Lachlan's also... How does he do the overlap of the voice? How does he make us talk over? Yeah, when we talk over it. It's very good. It's very good.

Anything you laughed at, though, that was something I told him to put in. Oh, right. That's important to note that. Oh, okay. Unless you found it offensive, in which case, it was definitely Lachlan. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, should we keep doing the podcast?

If it's just a sitting time bomb that's going to, to ruin our future success. Well, I think that that's the thrill of living, isn't it, Dom? It's a high, it's a high stakes game. It's a higher stakes game. If at any moment, you're sitting on a ticking time bomb. I mean, I thought live radio was exciting. But actually, it's ethereal.

It gets kept. Yes, it goes down into the memory hole. Yeah. Podcasting. You know what we should do? We should video it and then clip it so that it goes online. And that's how you really get into trouble. Because then everything you say gets absorbed by, the hive mind of

mega extremists and things are that. Who I won't say a bad word about. No, who are wonderful people. I mean, when you say extremists, what you mean is to be patriots. Extremely... Extremely... Maga.

Yeah, extremely good at what they do. They do. Yeah. In their chosen field, there's considerable expertise. There you go. Yeah. Red hats off to them.

Yeah. All right. Well, there you go. So we've essentially created a legacy that will come back to haunt us. And it's important to note we'll probably never be listened to again except by people trawling to it.

And let's face it, catch out Charles Firth. They're not going to go looking for me. I am wondering though, Dom, because you know, you talk about legacy and I think... Is you seen the National Archives yet? Oh, it should be. It will be.

It will be. But I'm thinking about my gravestone and I'm just wondering... Oh, wow. Do you think maybe I could have all 400 and 40 hours transcribed onto my gravestone? I think you should. It's like the Rosetta Stone.

You'll never truly be dead while people are still transcribing Charles's podcast onto stone tablets. Okay, final question for chat GPT, and this is the thing that's really going to be shocking, as I continue with the maths here. How many words did we say in 440 hours? Well, let's say on an average episode, so I reckon probably 100 words a minute on average, maybe?

So what's that? So 40, so 60, so 60 times 100 is 6,000 times 440 is 2.4 million, is it? Do you think we speak slow, normal or fast? Well, we often speak simultaneously, so it's got to be fast. Fast. 4,759,200 words. Wow. I think the 40 to 50 average length novels.

It's our war and peace. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just not sure whether it's Royal Peace. I'm still sitting on the fence. We're part of the Iconiclus network. Get you tomorrow.