The Chaser Report - The Bright Side Of Microplastics & Zuckerberg's Evil Lair

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Dom gives us a full tour of Mark Zuckerberg's underground lair (that totally isn't evil). Meanwhile Charles has some good news about microplastics. Also, make sure you leave a review! We LITERALLY read all of them. 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 Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles. Two fascinating stories today, somewhat linked in a way. First, some cheery medical news. Oh, good. Microplastics.

You know, in tiny, incredibly tiny pieces of plastic. Yes. They've been found. Not necessarily that small, though. I mean, microplastics, they're not the worst thing in the world. I think they're a nanoplastics. Oh, really? Is that?

Oh, they're smaller. Even smaller. More than half of the people undergoing surgery for clogged arteries in this study have blood vessels that are riddled with microplastics. So, and a far greater chance of dying and stroke and heart attack. Right. But compared to those whose arteries were free of plastic. That doesn't seem good. But is there any, I thought the whole point about microplastics is that we all have them.

It's like an equal opportunity. We all have them in our bodies. Yeah. Yeah. So there's that. And then there's also the news. It's amazing, expose, in Wired. They've managed to get the plans of Mark Zuckerberg's Supervillain Lair.

It's a $270 million US compound in Hawaii with a giant underground bunker, cameras everywhere and lots of hidden doors. So we can take a look at that. If anyone's thinking of building a bunker, this really is. It's a cutting edge design to avoid it all. Well, I just hope that he does the whole, he shares the whole design process and building thing on Instagram. That'd be good, isn't it?

Yeah. Like Andy Lee is doing it. the moment with his old expensive house. Yeah, exactly. Put it all out there. Yeah. Now that sounds very good. Plenty of getting into.

Just before we do, it's been a while since we talked about the reviews of the podcast on Apple podcasts. You can jump on there. Please leave us a five-star review out of kindness or appreciation or pity. I literally hate this part of the show. And the only review that's been written recently. I know what this is going to be about. It says literally great show, five stars, particularly like the way Charles Firth,

relentlessly incorrect. uses the word literally. I have a problem with this, which is that literally can mean literally, literally, I mean literally, literally, but it can also mean the opposite of literally. Figuratively.

Figuratively. It can literally mean figuratively. Yes, exactly. It can figuratively, literally mean figuratively. So this review says that you use it in order to sound like a moronic teenager for comedic effect. Works pretty well.

Is this because you have teenagers? Is that, is that we've picked it up? Is that how I, do I come across as young? I'd see, I'd take that as a compliment. The review by that name of annoying pedant says At least I assume it's for comedic effect As the alternative is that he actually has no clue And they should have written literally no clue

What the word literally mean So thank you for that review That's exactly what I like to see Five stars and a fairly close to the bone personal attack Five stars from me For the review, well done Annoying pedant Are we sure that it's not from you, Dom?

Well, annoying tick pedant tick I wouldn't hear him the show five stars. All right, let's crack on to those stories after this. So where will we start, Charles? Let's start with the microplastics, because this is troubling news. Our lifestyles are killing us. But on the bright side, Charles, how good is plastic?

No, the most troubling part of this whole story is that Craig was right. Oh, God, you're right. He was. Yes. Craig Rucastel. We mocked him for years for banning plastic bags and banning straw. Straws. Oh, my God.

Winding about coffee cups and things. Oh, my God. But actually, it turns out, while we were snorting lines of plastic... Yeah, drinking from plastic bottles was abandoned. Mocking him. He was saving people's lives. I mean, I thought, you know, drinking from a plastic bottle or whatever in recycling it, my job was done, right?

If I drank a bottle of coke or something, Coke's zero. In my case, I can't afford to drink Coke. You put it in the recycling. That's your job done. But apparently, no, microplastics. Yeah. I mean, Craig really is the mother

Teresa of the modern era. Do you think you should get some sort of, like, Lord of Australia, like your sister? Yeah. Wouldn't you hate that if Craig and your sister both got made part of the order of Australia? Oh, bearable. So that's the bad news.

The good news is that they did try to study. They did it do a study quite recently to try and track the effects of microplastics on newborn babies. Oh, wow. And the great news is that they could, not find a control group of people who didn't have microplastics in their placenta. So the point is, this is, like, so you go, oh, it's bad because, like, it's going to kill everyone.

But at the same time, it's an equal opportunity problem. We're all in it together. Yeah. So it's not like you can escape to the virgin rainforests of Hawaii and not have microplastics. You literally, yeah, we're starting. This is sort of, it's like all the other world problems that are rapidly being solved. like climate change. Is that being solved?

And, you know, world famine and war and all that sort of stuff. Because everyone in the world has an interest in solving the problem, we're just fixing it up properly. Yeah, that's right. So there's no doubt that we'll get onto this. We'll just ban plastic probably within a year's time. I mean, it's pretty bad. They've found, they looked at 257 people in Italy with carotid artery disease.

That's where the fatty plaque deposits restrict blood flow to the brain. And they found in 60% of patients, there were microplastics in those plaques. Three years after the surgery, 20% of the people with microplastics had died or suffered a stroke or heart attack. And only 7.5% of the microplastic free types suffered the same fate. I presume me they're hippies, though. I mean, there could be mum beans. Who are those people? Do you think they surveyed some root castles for this research they may well have?

Or is there a sort of plastic, you know how the Mediterranean diet was very, you know, sort of. For healthy, isn't it? For health reasons, is there a sort of plastic-free version of the Mediterranean diet? Maybe that, along with the olive or they eat fuel plastics. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And who would have thought processed food would be bad for us? Yeah, I know. Well, with the warnings.

Shocker. So, hold on. So the thing is, does this all mean, though, that, like, heart surgery is now a form of plastic surgery? Oh, that's good. Like, can we, therefore, like, what does this mean? Like, do we becoming? plastic? Like, does it mean... I was just thinking, are those newborn babies? Are they

more waterproof than our ancestors? Yeah, exactly. Like, and if we want to sort of change the shape of our face, can we just get out, I don't know, like an iron or something? Yeah, just hot mould ourselves. Hot mould ourselves. Yeah. But also, we are living longer than ever before. So, okay,

there's plastic in all of our arteries. Yeah. But maybe it's enduring, helping them to last lot. Because you can't plastic doesn't break down. Exactly. And also, when I die, I like to think that in thousands of years, my microplastics will be the only part of me that's left. I'll have a legacy for thousands of years through my microplastics. Yeah, they'll discover dom-shaped microplastics.

Yeah. And they'll go, oh my God. And they'll interpret it really wrongly, won't they? They'll go, this person must have been considered a god. Yeah. Because he was preserved in a plastic sheet. I die, my bones eventually break down. And there's like a me-shaped little plastic model.

Yeah. Somewhere inside the coffin, it's quite... And you know what happened? The British. In 5,000 years, the British will discover all these mummified remains of people from all around the world. And for a little period of time, they'll become a delicacy. They'll be eaten by the rich. Why are the British?

Because they have no tasting food. No, that's what happened with Egypt. When they discovered all the mummies in Egypt. This is the little known fact about why there aren't very many mummies left. Is they become a delicacy? Are you serious? They used to eat mummies. The British used to eat mummies.

Yes. Gosh, that explains a lot. Yes. It's like in the 1870s or whatever. So colonialism, it's not all bad. It can be delicious. It turns out. That's good.

Yeah, this is what all the sort of anti-colonialists forget. Is there's upsides? Yep. Like the deliciousness of the mummified bodies. This is a good point at which to take a break, I think, can come back with something a little healthier. The Hawaiian lifestyle being enjoyed by Mike Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. The Chaser Report.

News a few days after it happens. So isn't this a great love story? You remember the social network where you two of them meet when he's just under investigation by Harvard being kicked out. He meets the love of his life. Yes. And they're still together, Priscilla and Mark. Isn't that nice?

Well, he has all this sort of deeply personal data on her. I don't think she has much of a choice. Yeah, right. I imagine the surveillance she's been put under. Actually, I think the truth is that Mark was going out with Priscilla before he did Facebook. And the movie sort of, the movie actually... It was during the period when he...

made that face smash thing. That's right, the first thing. No, no, no, but apparently it was actually, he was already going out with her. I saw an interview with him where it meant the timeline on the social network was just completely not true. Like, I was already in a steady relationship. But it was much better for the story that he didn't have a girlfriend.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because otherwise he would have just come across as a creep doing face smash. Well, let's see at the end where he'd just refreshes on his end. But, you know, you know. So the scale of this thing is extraordinary. It's 1,400 acres, so absolutely enormous. And basically the way that it works, the size of the bunker is absolutely nuts.

This is in Kauai, the smallest island in the Hawaiian chain. And 30 bedrooms, 30 bathrooms. 30 bedrooms? Yeah, 30 bathrooms. Why? Two mansions. Two mansions joined together, presumably one for the help. Is it underground?

It's got a giant bunker underground as part of it. Because I was going to say, part of the point of living in Kauai is the view. Yeah, there's a beautiful view in the mission. Yeah, yeah. Maybe there's a view from the bunker somehow, I don't know, on the screen. It's got elevators, offices, conference rooms, huge kitchen. This is not really a home. Like, if it's got 30 bedrooms and 30 bathrooms.

Well, apparently it's at corporate retreat as well, you know. In the event of the world ending, you'd really want senior management of meta. And that's how you can deduct it off tax, presumably. Presumably is. Yeah, yeah. Well, the best bit, this is actually quite fun. there's a web of tree houses that will be connected by

rope bridges so that you can go in from one to the other a bit like the EWock Village in Return of the Jedi Oh lovely Yeah Either that or they know That the ground is going to become a city

And you can't be able to walk on it Yeah Yeah yeah What they know And this is the question Really what does Mark Zuckerberg Know about this already So the giant

Underground bunker has It's not got an escape hatch With a ladder There are cameras Absolutely everywhere It's filled with concrete It's got a giant metal door, like a blast door.

So what does he know, is my question. It's going to have its own water tank and pumps. What he knows. And they grow their own food. So there's absolutely, it can be completely self-sufficient. If the rest of the world ends, this bunker can survive. But I'll tell you what he knows is that he's exploiting

the other 8 billion people on this earth. And that they, if they ever got a glimpse of how much fucking privilege he has compared to the rest of them, they'd fucking murder him a second. Like, he is acting entirely rationally, given his absolute position of brutal, violent privilege that he exercises and fails to cede. I mean, that's one reason. He knows

he is the problem. This demonstrates that he's got some glimpse, some glimmer of inside into how problematic his very existence is. Okay, so you've got the sort of tycoon class times a million like the sort of robber baron class yeah yeah but there are so many other possible reasons charles i mean what about just this week you know instagram went down and threads went down for a period of time i think the fact that um travis kelsey's brother uh announced his retirement at the same time that taylor swift told everybody to vote that apparently that broke it right that's from what i understand um but those people i mean people without instagram millennials without instagram for three or four hours the zoomers oh they would have been ready to

murder the owners imagine how it's injurly the distracted set i.e. anyone under about 30 who just spends the entire day on Instagram every day or TikTok or whatever. Imagine, yeah, if the internet was cut off for a few days. They would be murderous. They'd have a glimmer of their own, you know, the rage that they would start to feel would be immense.

It'd be like the, you know, emerging from the Matrix. Yes. And suddenly you realize the world sucks. Yes. So that's one possible. And they in particular have just, been completely fucked over by the older generations. And then what happens in a few years' time when Zuckerberg presumably sacks everybody

who works at Facebook and replaces them with an AI, then they'll rise up against him. I don't know which group is the most likely to want to rend him from him. I mean, the fellow Hawaiians who would be annoyed that he took the best bit of the island and built a fence around the whole thing would be pretty crossed too. I'd say, he's got a private beach on this thing. I think this is what these sort of apocalyptic billionaires fail to take into a count is that, you know, they exist, but they really do exist at some level only without consent. You know what I mean?

Like, there will come a time when we withdraw their social licence and they will be eliminated. And it doesn't matter how thick the wall is. At that point, it's over for them, don't you think? Like, it's just not true. I mean, Kara Swisher has just written a book called Techheads. Oh, yes. Extraordinary. It's worth checking out that she's been on several podcasts, including.

the Daily, you know, the New York Times podcast. And yet not ours. Not ours. But she is a fucking rocking... Yeah, she's extraordinary. Rocking commentator. But one of her things was she was in a conference with El L. Mosque and he was describing his lair, which is based in California somewhere.

And he's got... Yeah, again, it's the steel metal door and they've all got bicycles or something to get them to the helicopter to escape, whatever. And she was asked, well, what, you know, would you come knocking on the door? And she'd go, no, I would come knocking on the door with a gun and I would shoot you. And then I'd invite all my friends to your lair.

And she said it straight to his face. And it's like, that's, you know, like... He would have just been like, okay, did not compute. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Layer 3.0 with a gun detector. But it's like, you know, like it's over for... Like, that you can't... Like, their feelings about it...

What this layer represents is there. own desire to not feel inadequate. Yes. You know, and it doesn't matter how stiff your steel is or how high your treetop canopies with the ropes are. Like, your feelings of inadequacy are still going to be there. You know, like, you can't escape yourself. That's the whole problem that Mark Zuckerberg.

Well, that's the reason. I would hate to be in a remote bunker myself. Yes. Alone with my own thoughts and no distraction. Yes. At least where I am now, I can walk to the shops and get a bagel. And your only connection, presumably, is through Facebook. I mean, that would be the worst thing in the world.

The only way you could escape the bunker would be with a meta headset. Imagine how crap that would be. Yes, I mean, I can understand, like, sure, if it was an Applevision prior headset, it would be right. I want to find out with Tim Cook's Larry's. I'll go there. That would be a high-tech level. It would be very beautiful design. Imagine Johnny Ive would.

And it would just work as well. Just plug it in. My favourite detail, I think, about Zuckerberg's layer, and apparently this has done throughout the property, and he's done it from some other houses as well. He loves a hidden entrance. Someone went to visit his house in California once and could not figure out where the door was,

like walk around the whole property. And then someone saw him on a camera and suddenly a bit of hedge swings open. Right. And that's how you get in. So apparently in the bunker, there's all these walls, literally like a supervillains layer.

Yeah, I said literally. So you go over to a wall and suddenly the bookshelf swings open and that's, you know, the office or whatever. But you know that that's actually not intentional at all. What actually happened was that Mark Zuckerberg got the person who designed Facebook UI to design his house. And now I can possibly work out. And they thought that that was the logical way to do it.

Oh, yeah. Imagine trying to exit is impossible. There's more pop-ups, whatever you do. So this is what's happening. I guess the point in all this is if you can manage to go and live in a remote lair in her Hawaii, you won't be safe from the revolution in any of its forms, but you might be safe from microplastics. That's the one thing you might be able to avoid. No, but I don't think that's true. Isn't the whole point that, like, Hawaii is right next

to the Great Pacific rubbish patch. Garbage patch, of course, yes. The giant plastic kind of whirlpool of all the, all the plastic that goes in the ocean goes to the one place, and Mark Zuckerberg, apparently, has their house next to it. There's a house next to it, probably on top of it, especially or underneath it. if we could possibly find a way to redirect. You know Shark NATO, the notion that a big, big typhoon dumped all the sharks in Los Angeles. Yeah. Imagine a plastic NATO that just dumped all of the plastic into Mark Zuckerberg's backyard.

That would be a hidden door. So there you go. Yeah. Why didn't we invent a world destroying social network and make all these billions of dollars? You could have hacked it. No. Look, I like to think, I mean, sure, it may just not be, we didn't have the ability or something like that. Well, I like to think we're just nicer people.

I think at some level, to succeed on those terms in this world, you've got to be a massive asshole. Well, the kind of sociopath that goes, yeah, I'm going to need a bunker. Yeah. Like, we could fix the world. Yeah. Let's not do that. Be complicated.

But a bunker we can do. Or you can be like Craig and actually, you know. In the use of plastics. In the use of plastics. And use your ability, it's good. Oh, I know. I'm nauseating. I just can't see it.

Yeah. Yeah. I literally just vomited. Gary's from Rhode. We're part of our Conantrass Network and we'll see you tomorrow.