The Chaser Report - Swearing in as... CORONACAST

Episode Date: August 21, 2022

In this episode of CORONACAST our usual hosts have fallen ill and have been replaced by Dr Firth and Dr Knight. What they lack in medical training, they make up for in "vibin' it out 'n' shit." Join them in the first of The Chaser Report's Podcast Takeover Week! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is CoronaCast. Hello, it's Monday the 22nd of August, recording on Gatigal Land. Charles and Dom here. Today we've appointed ourselves in Scott Morrison's Dale as the hosts of CoronaCast, an ABC podcast all about the coronavirus. That's right. I'm Dr Charles Firth.

And I'm health reporter Dominic Tar. highlight. What we do now in the new format of Coronacast Charles is we just do some random banter at the start of the show. It's kind of bizarre. Well, it's because market research shows that it makes us more relatable and more trustworthy, so that every time we get something egregiously wrong about the coronavirus, we don't actually get roasted in the Australian as much. Because he's so likable. Yeah. So the last time I listened, Norman Swan was talking about his buttocks and how we'd had some issues with them. And entertaining the amusing notion of a spin-off buttock Well, actually, snap, because I've had problems with my buttocks all weekend, Dom.

Oh, really? What's going on? Is it aging? Oh, I think it's just probably some sort of hideous STI. Is it your Scottish heritage? It might even be monkeypox. Who knows? Yeah, no, it's my Scottish heritage.

That's right. Which you can hear from my thick. Glazuagian accent. I think that's enough random banter. Yeah. Should we do a podcast about the novel coronavirus? Yes, I haven't listened to any of those in the last two and a half years. There's just, there needs to be one more.

We could do that, or we could talk about an even greater threat to human. Forget COVID. I've got something even bigger after this. That was an ad, which you wouldn't have heard if you'd gone to chaser.com.com. And subscribe for nine bucks a month, by the way. It's working now. The ad-free version, we've actually fixed it, amazingly, you know. What we sell you, you now.

get. It's amazing. It's a bizarre thing. How are you feeling, Charles? Are you... I'm in a great mood. Really? Over the weekend, we finished the final layout of the shot anthology, which is a book that's coming out in October. I'd never heard of that. I can't believe you haven't plugged it before. Yeah, well, it's not on sale yet, so what's the point of plugging?

But, no, it's, and it looks fantastic. It's all about, it's literally about the last two and a half years of lockdown and everything like that. I'm going to guess there's some articles in there that are not happy. with Scott Morrison. Yeah, I think pretty much every article in there is not happy with Scott Morrison. So it's like it's the shot brackets at Scott Morrison's head. Yeah, that's right. But it's such a beautiful reminder of, like, it's a very emotional book because it's, it's sort of almost like a diary by some of Australia's best writers of what happened during the pandemic.

Well, particularly the shots editor, Dave Milner was just, he just emoted so much on that column. Like, you'd read it. I remember reading it over and over again. end and just feeling, oh, those poor fuckers in Melbourne. And then what happened to us, where we're a breath, you're like, now, it's our turn to be, oh, you don't understand. You just don't understand what it's like, you don't understand what it's like, as you said many times on this podcast.

But then they got it as well, so they had more luck. Anyway, that's awful. But you know, one way, Charles? But it's good. I'm in a good mood because it's all laid out. It's going to the printers on. Yeah, and things are looking kind of good. People are cautiously saying COVID may almost be ovary sort of peering down.

Things are good. Things are good. Well, Charles, let me throw something else at you that I'm sure we'll lift your mood. Because there's good news and there's bad news in this story. Okay. The Times in London reports, a study asking this cheery question for a Monday, which countries would survive a nuclear war? Scientists' answer.

Oh, okay. Well, surely Australia would be pretty well off in that regard. Yeah, that's the funny. That's the good news. The good news is, so who would win in a nuclear war between the US and Russia? I mean, no one wins in a macro sense. But the countries with the best hope of at least, and I'm quoting here,

at least seeing their civilisations survive for a decade afterwards, Argentina. Argentina and Australia. What about New Zealand? I don't know if they're worthy of even mentioned it. So imagine if the only culture that survived was Australia and Argentina. Well, I'll tell you what, Argentina, they've got those good grill restaurants. They do.

It wouldn't be too bad. We like playing rugby. We could play rugby against each other. They could beat us in size. soccer, the only time we ever played any... We'd have to teach some cricket, Charles, so that they understood our ways. Well, let's see, because the only thing

that I would care about is who remains in cricket. The English would, of course, be wiped out. Well, in fact, it's not good. There would be enough for a team. Like, it depends whether you look at the upside or the downside. The downside, according to the times, is that the study suggests that 90% of Britons would starve to death.

Is that a downside or upside? Whereas, you know, 60 million... That means there's still... six million poms, they'd just have a worst cricket team. Yeah. Well, although New Zealand's pretty good and they've only got three million people. That's true. Well, maybe they'd still be a, maybe the ashes would continue.

There would be a lot of ashes. Actually, statistically, if you kill somebody in England, you're likely to kill a bad cricketer, aren't you? That's the nature of England. Imagine how big the urn would be if you've got the ashes of lords in there after the nuclear fires torn. Yeah, yeah. So there's that.

And the thing is, the scientists went on to try and model exactly. what would happen. I think South Africa would survive all right as well. I think it would... The Southern Hemisphere is a good place to be. I think it would be fine. Because if we've got Argentina, we'd teach them cricket, we've got New Zealand, we've got South Africa and Australia.

Still got... That's enough. Would West Indies would probably be... Oh, they're on the equator. You'd have Thailand. You'd have like Bali. What about India? Is India going to do?

India's no. India's too far north, I'm afraid. So just to just to give you the full horror of this. It's a cheerful Monday morning story. What will happen when the massive firestorms caused by a large-scale nuclear exchange throws up enough soot to block out the sun? Oh, well, that's good for global warming, though, isn't it? Wouldn't it be bad?

Wouldn't that be another greenhouse? It would block out the sun, though. Oh, I suppose that's true. It would have a... It'd be like, well, like, wanting sunblock. And global warming's just caused by the sun. That's right. Being too bright.

It's nothing to do with human activity. So, then basically the staties, Charles. What I'm at here is that even if you avoided being among the initial deaths, the indirect effect of the conflict means that 5 billion people would starve the death immediately after the attack, but not in Australia. That would be, that would be very depressing. It would be a depressing moment of human civilisation. But on the bright side, imagine how many gold medals would win at the next Olympics.

It'd be even better than the Commonwealth Games. I don't think this is a good topic, but this is going to get you cancelled. I'm not having any part in making jokes about 5 billion people dying. But they're not going to be around to cancel us. No, look, it is absolutely horrifying. So what would happen? Like, okay, so that means there's still 2 billion people around. Yeah, they're still a few people around.

A big chunk of Africa gets to survive. Right, yeah, because what I'm thinking is, like, who will make our iPhones? Because just China? Oh, can you imagine? You have to get a New Zealander iPhone. We'd have to, or they'd be made in Australia iPhones. They'd be like four times as heavy and wouldn't work with it. In the software, we'd crash.

We'd get Telecom Australia to make them. They would run MSDOS. Because, no, the key thing is it's whether you grow your own wheat. Do you grow enough new things and crops? Yes. We have the wheat. So that means Gina Reinhardt because doesn't she own all the wheat fields in Australia? she would become the sort of

the queen the richest person in the world she'd be the Jeff Bezos of the new world of the new world and it says it wouldn't all be peaches and cream for Australia yes we'd have enough food to survive

and we'd be away from the sort of northern hemisphere epicentre of the blast yes but every single person who are still alive would be trying to get to Australia to have the wheat so actually the sort of no boat people policy

would be very forward thinking it would be very hard to to enforce. I'm thinking if giant flotillas of millions of people. Billions of people. Billions of people. Billions of people. That is a good election for Peter Dutton to run in, though.

Oh, yes. I think we would trust him. That would be the moment where he would really get shot. His time to shine. Can you imagine, because Scott Morrison had that little dinky little, I stop these with a picture of a boat that probably, you know, carried people who were desperately in need. Desperately fleeing.

And probably got turned around and drowned, yeah. I stopped these. Yeah. Imagine how big Peter Dutton's would be. It would be a giant warship. Yeah, because presumably there'd be a lot of, like, literally cruise ships and things like that. And I'll tell you what, Peter Dutton was not very good at stopping the cruise ships from

coming into the beginning of the pandemic, was he? Yeah, yeah. They just let them in. And also, that all turned up to the border and said, but we're, we're opairs for the Dutton family. Yeah. It would be a billion opairs. The opair loophole. It's extraordinary research.

Like, they've looked at all kinds of aspects of this. Can I just say, this scenario, I mean, I know it's bad, everyone dying, but the idea of presumably a whole lot of brilliant people from all around the world suddenly coming to Australia, like, it's not necessarily a bad scenario, is it, we've become like the New York of the world. I mean, if we improve our attitudes to migrants, we might. Yeah, yeah, well, I think we'd have to, but necessity wouldn't we? We'd have to just sort of go, you know, especially if there's nowhere else in the world for them. them to go, and we've got all these wheat. Well, you know where they could go.

They could go to Bill O'Elela. It would be the largest city in the world. Yeah, that's right? I know, but this is the crazy thing, right? Yeah. Here's a moral dilemma for you, Charles. I want you to wait on this one, right? Yeah. They've figured out, so they've looked at so many aspects of what would happen with this global nuclear war. So it's actually about the hunger.

It's not, I thought that the scariest thing about the nuclear war would have been being blown up or getting radiation poisoning. But apparently it's actually the starvation. Right. So what they've figured out is that we could stave a lot of it off. If we cultivated mushrooms, seaweed, other algae, if you ate seaweed and mushrooms for a year, you can still do that in low light.

Yeah, right, because fungi doesn't really need any light to grow, does it? So if you do that and you build greenhouses very quickly, not the greenhouse effect, which would be in it. But if you actually build greenhouses and cultivate all this stuff, then you could keep a lot of people to survive the nuclear window. Yeah. Because I've often also thought, wouldn't you just eat each other? Like as you died

I don't they haven't modelled that Charles That's a very good point But wouldn't there other people be They'd be toxic and riding on the inside Well here's the moral dilemma though Charles I mean that you found another moral dilemma Would we eat each other Yeah

And that said I mean we've got to make sure we keep having interns at the chaser Yes exactly Very important And then Lachlan needs to fatten up a bit I think Our producer So here's your moral dilemma Charles

So here's your moral dilemma Charles So they're saying we should consider just making these investments now and say, well, we want to be able to have a food source that survives a nuclear winter so that 5 billion people don't starve. I mean, that sounds like it's worth preparing for, doesn't it? Well, yeah. Except the problem that the scientist say is that if you did that, then we'd be more likely to fire nuclear weapons.

Oh, yes. People are like, well, it's not going to exterminate everybody. You'll just get it won't be one billion. Sure, what, surely what should happen is Australia, like if Australia's going to survive, and, you know, Argentina, if they want to, should start developing, you know, mushroom growing facilities and seaweed harvesting facilities now, but not tell anyone. Secret seaweed stash. Secret stash just in case.

Then, if we do find a couple of billion people at our doorstep, we can say, welcome in, here, we've got some mushrooms for you. That's such a lovely, inclusive model of a future Australia, with a billion people living in it. You were trying to sort of ruin everyone's Monday, weren't you? I was. Yeah. And yet, this has turned into the feel-good story of the year. Yes, the majority of people have died in a horrible fashion.

Yeah, yeah. But in Australia, no one's going to beat us for gold medals at the Olympics. No, no. Which is ultimately the most important metric. You know what the worst thing about a global nuclear window would be, though? What? is just how the Melbourneians would find a way to complain about it, wouldn't they? Well, they'd also be very well prepared.

I mean, if, if, presuming that the sunlight got blocked out here in Australia and things would have, they'd have the right wardrobe. And they'd, and also they'd be, you know, like, presumably you have to stay indoors to get away from all the fallout. And that, their bars are already set up for it. Yeah, it's all, you know, oh, yeah, another lockdown. That's fine. We've got, I mind if I do.

We've got craft beers down in this, in this dank cellar. I'll write some angsty essays about it and publish it in a couple of years. I feel sad for other people. That part of it isn't totally dead yet. The Northern Hemisphere. But let's face it, the Northern Hemisphere has said it too good for too long. It's had its day. Yes.

It's time for us to shine. It's the southern hemisphere to shine. And we don't have nuclear weapons. Argentina doesn't have nuclear weapons. No. I mean, they broke it. They fix it, right? South Africa used to have nuclear weapons.

They're the only country in the world that has voluntary. given up all its nuclear weapons. Did they? Yeah. They had it under apartheid. They developed a whole stash of nuclear weapons. When Nelson Mandela came in, they commissioned them all. That's really inspiring.

Nelson Mandela would be such a great model of how to lead humanity out of. It's a terrifying scenario. Yeah, yeah. But we don't have them anymore. No, he did. Just like everyone else is going to be. This is horrible. This is really horrible.

Can we finish yet or? I just wanted to keep going until you got properly depressed. Oh, you want me to be depressed, do you? Well, you're just so happy. Nothing, nothing about this conversation has made me depressed. Like, look, frankly, all my most successful friends live overseas, either in America or England or Europe or whatever. They all, frankly, are much more successful than me, the happier.

They've got like these amazing families They've often much wealthier than me Like nothing would be giving me greater pleasure Than to be able to ring them up And go, oh, you've got a nuclear winner Sorry, I'm just, I've just got a mouth full of mushrooms You'll just send you a packet of seaweed Yeah, in the post

Yeah Good luck with that Good luck with the boat right out here Ah, Gary's from Road We're part of the Acast, Creative Network And do let us know what other podcasts We should swear ourselves in airs for the rest of the week because, you know, as Coronacus today,

I think we should keep doing this all week.