The Chaser Report - The Forbes In Our Stars

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Charles ponders the ethical issues around forcing human brains to play Pong. Aleksa tells the hauntingly beautiful tale of two jazz playing friends who turned to a political assassination cover up. Plus John takes a look at a Forbes writer's advice for laundering billions of crypto dollars. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. It is Friday the 11th of February 2022, Gabby Bolt, Charles Firth and Dom Knight. Hi, Dom. Hello. Charles is still in Melbourne, by the way. This episode is partly made in Melbourne slash Nub. Yes, that's true.

And I hear you've found there's an innovation in stem cell technology, Charles. This is the most incredible story ever. Okay. And I think everyone just needs to quit work immediately. Oh, I was, I've quit like a year ago. Yeah, I barely worked as it is. So scientists have managed to put some human brain cells in a petri dish. That's where they were.

And then they've hooked it up to Pong, you know, the game Pong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the bridge. And there's a line going up and down and the ball bounces. Yeah, yeah. They've taught the human brain cells in the Petri Dish to play Pong and it works. I can't believe that's where my brain's.

themselves went. Are you serious? I've been wondering. The cells on their own can run Pong. Yes. That's fucked. The point is, and look, there's two sides of this story. The first one is, how is this possibly ethical?

Because how do you know that those human brain cells that are being used for Pong don't have some level of human consciousness? Yeah, like, sentience. You know, like, there is sentience. Like, if you watch the video of it playing Pong, You can see it sort of hesitates and doesn't quite know where to put the wall and then goes up and... Because it feels embarrassed. It's like, oh, come on, I can do so much more than this.

I've got philosophy. I've got, you know, advanced unsanning a science. You're making me play fucking pong. I might sue. This sounds exactly like my brain stem cells. I'm telling you. But imagine, imagine, you know, dying, donating your body to medical science. And then, you know, waking up and you're stuck in this, you don't have eyes, you don't have ears, you have no thing.

but you're just forced to play Pong, possibly for eternity. And you can't retract your consent, can you? There's no way, like, unless, because humans always find a way, right? Maybe there'll be a way of, like, spelling out in Morse code in the Pong power. No, no, because who the fuck knows Morse code anymore? You'd be going, oh, fuck, why didn't I learn Morse code before I died? I did learn Morse code. I learned Morse code because my dad was in Scouts and I found his scout books, and then I saw there

was a whole chapter on Morse code, and then he had a Morse code, and now I know Morse code. Well, can you interpret what the brain's code? Why don't you tap out? Help me. I'm stuck in a game of Pong. Go on. Okay. Hold on. While Gabi's doing this, I'm just thinking more about this. It's probably shouldn't be that surprised by this news. I mean, Spotify's had one brain cell presenting its most popular podcast for years. Hey.

Take that, Joe Rogan. With your money? Help me would be dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dash dot dot dot dot dot. I can't believe this way of communicating. Code didn't catch on more. Why do we go with the whole alphabet thing? You're supposed to have the little bipper. Yeah, and they don't fucking exist anymore.

And then me is dash dash dot. So I don't know what space is. I forget how space works. Can I suggest that we get Gabby to host the world's first Morse code-based podcast? Fuck yeah. I'd happily do that. I don't know how anyone would want to listen to it, but I would love to just sit here and be like, dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dot.

Should we get some? Should we get some brain cells and, like, play our podcast to them for market research? I mean, I think I'd want mine back from the Pong Petri dish. That's... But this is, this is the other thing, which is those few brain cells can actually play Pong better than I can. Yeah, it's upsetting. Because the scientist said, oh, well, it doesn't play Pong as well as the AI computer that we trained. But it plays it, you know, well enough.

It's as good as any human. You're just going, is that how dumb I am? No, no, no, no, no. It's the child prodigy method. Like, if you make a small, uh, intelligent thing, learn one thing and only one thing, eventually they will get pretty good at it. Yeah, but also it's got to be a fair comparison, Charles. Like if you pour a whole bottle of wine into the petri dish, you'll probably get a fair test. I reckon we're like one game of pong away from the entire plot of the first I robot movie.

Um, so that's fun. Can't wait for them to put stem cells into robots. It'd be absolutely fucked. We really are sliding further into, dystopia. It's a wonderful thing to see. On today's podcast, we've got some deep dyes from John and Alex. Alex has got this crazy story about an assassination by a president's best friend. Yes, and John has a story about money laundering. And your favorite thing, TikTok. Oh, yeah. But all of that coming up after Rebecca Day and Muno in the Chaser Newsroom.

The LNP have officially kicked off their election campaign by reopening Australia's borders to international workers, which will immediately allow them to start condemning foreigners for coming and stealing Australian jobs. The opening of borders has been celebrated loudly by Pauline Hansen, who was worried she was beginning to run out of material. Carpenter and part-time universe creator Jesus H. Christ has today been left scratching his head

after learning that his followers are now trying to ban trans children from schools. Despite having no recollection of making this instruction himself, Jesus' as followers have remained adamant that bullying trans kids is in the rulebook, right between the part where the Bible tells people to give 10% of their income to a private organisation that doesn't pay tax, and the bit where it says guys wearing a funny hat get to dictate what God wants. Finally, the Australian government have won themselves yet another gold medal for mental gymnastics, as they argue for more tolerant workplaces

whilst simultaneously working to create less accepting schools. The judges were amazed and awarded bonus points to both the coalition and opposition for landing synchronised double backflips after sustaining injuries shooting themselves in the foot. That's the latest updates from the Chaser Newsroom. I'm Rebecca Deunamuno, and it's a bad day to be a beer. Alexa is here in a cheery yellow Microsoft T-shirt.

Hello, Alexa. Hello, he's paid by Bill Gates. It's all the ruse. Well, I mean, once upon a time I was. I used to do promo work. I used to stand next to stuff and tell people to buy it. You're a spokesmodel for, like, Microsoft Windows. For everything.

For Microsoft Windows, Ribina, Serena. Is that why you have all those shirts? Because you have a Riberina shirt as well. Yeah, that's all I wear now. Fun fact, Alexis actually never bought a shirt in his life. He's just been given brand shirts. It's all product placement. Can I pay you, Alexer, to promote me?

Oh. To people about how great I am. I already do that. I thought that's what you're paying me for because I don't do much work here. So I assume. What does the T-Shay going to say? Charles Firth, not as bad as you think. I think it just says Charles Firth and everyone's left guessing.

Actually, that's true. He's probably at a point in his career. We just need a basic awareness campaign. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 48 size, Charles Firth. Cross the chest. All right. Let's make that happen. But look, you've got a story for us.

It's a beautiful story from everyone. everyone's favorite country, Burkina Faso. This week, they've kind of sentenced an ex-president, who was president for some 27 years, for killing the former president. So, Blaise Compare, if I'm pronounced that right, I'm not very good at French. He killed his best friend, Thomas Sankara, who was president before him. And it's like a tragic and beautiful story, and I wonder why there hasn't been a Hollywood movie made about it. It does sound like something Don Cheatel would win an Oscar for. two guys, Blaze and Thomas were two buddies and both captains in the army of Upper Volta,

which is the old French colonial name for Bikina Faso. And they had a jazz band, right? So Thomas Sankara was a guitarist. And Blaze sang. So they sang and they performed all around the country and they were like vaguely popular. Did they write songs? Do you know where they covers in a jazz band? They wrote songs. This is a bit of a spoiler. I'll come back to the song they wrote. So what ends up happening is that they both conspire to overthrow the kind of French-backed military dictatorship in Upper Volta. And they win, they ever take the country, and Thomas Sankaro is now the president. And they achieved all this through the power of music. Of jazz, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Haven't you seen Whiplash? You can do so much with a jazz tune. And their band was called Tutanku Jazz, which is all of a sudden jazz. But it had the word coup in it. and then, and then they cooed. Two, two of them. Two of them, two coup. Two to coo.

But, um, and then, and then with his jazz knowledge, he wrote the national anthem, which is still currently the national anthem. Is it a banging national anthem? I was going to say, is it a bob. Unfortunately, I looked it up and I thought it was going to be cool and jazzy. It's just a national anthem. That sucks. I'm waiting for a national anthem that has like a bit of...

I want some free jazz. Perunin to a lot. I'm making a whole country sing free jazz feels like a crime. The whole country in the Olympics. And the national anthem, for Bacquita Fasso. He missed his chance. It'll be distinctive.

I mean, the thing is, it's because he was killed too early. He would have had time to make a better national anthem. But I'm personally a very big fan of this man, Thomas Sankara. He's one of the youngest presidents in history. It was 33. And he just did crazy stuff. He was this big, like, anti-colonial dude. So he, like, nationalized everything.

He vaccinated two million children. He got rid of slavery and, like, fucked with. the landlords and he appointed um heaps of women to like high government positions which is like one of a first for africa in 1983 and i guess he made lots of enemies among like the local landlord elite the ex-lade boss of the anthem yeah it's just a horrible song they all just hated the song yeah that's the only reasons we loved your progressive policies and but song not a hit i'm not singing that i'm not fucking singing that um so it sounds like a pretty a pretty great legacy,

not the kind of person that you'd necessarily want to, I don't know, murder if you was your best friend. Well, the French got in his ear. The French were keen on getting back into Africa and they were annoyed at what this guy was doing. Lay's kind of conspired with these French boys

and killed him, killed his best friend and then became president. Hang on, hang on, hang on, that doesn't ring true. Like, if I was, you know, a foreign government came up to me and said, oh, here, why don't you kill your best friend? Well, no, child, that's what makes the story crazy, you see, because it doesn't sound like something the average, everyday person would do.

No, no, but I sort of feel like if I ended up agreeing to do that, then I'm not sure that that is my best friend. I don't think that's my best friend. No, no, but imagine being asked in French, though, if someone comes up and they're like, Jean-a-Pel, kill your friend. My name is kill your friend, by the way. Excuse me, Monsieur Vaule.

Are you going to goche with me? Siouxaugh, kill your friend. They're very persuasive. But yeah, who is the post? Where is the bibliotheque of the dead president? If the French weren't mad at us before, they're fucking mad at us now. There's no way.

Excuse me for the racism against the French. Oh, my God. Wow, I'd kill anyone for you. Yeah, that was hot. Can you kill Charles? Anyway, we'll get back to that. That's your best friend. Kill him yourself.

Let's not completely minimise this terrible political murder. So how did it go down? Well, they had a meeting of like all the government ministers and then they just came there. Instead of meeting and chatting, they just came with guns and killed him. What? In a meeting room? Yeah, yeah, like during like a normal whatever.

Like we've had some pretty awkward chase of board meetings over the past, but I don't think anyone's been armed. You don't know. As far as you know, yeah. It's kind of like a Julius Caesar thing. They all came in and just, like, just basically killed him. Did they all take, like, one shot? I have no idea.

I assume, like, they're musicians, so I assume they took a bit of artistic license and... What if they killed him with a guitar? That's a pretty, pretty shit way to go, but it'd be pretty funny. Well, not funny, but, like, pretty high-fold. Were the gunshots in, like, you know, five-four? What, like, West Side Story, America starts playing? Da-da-da-da-da-bop. Like, what do you, what do you mean?

Or, like, Edith's P-P. Gaff sings as the... Well, no, but in French jazz, yeah, that makes sense. Free jazz, just guns everywhere. But, yeah, Blaze came to power, came to the new Prime Minister, undid everything that his mate Thomas did, French loved him, everything was back to normal. And, like, you couldn't talk about the murder until 2015

when he was overthrown in big protests. So those 27 years, it was just like... He died. Nobody mentioned the guy before him that you liked a lot. So, like, now that... Because it's going to court, right? Like this week, it's going to court. And they want to put him in jail for 30 years.

30? Yeah. That doesn't seem very long. He had 27 years of being the usurp president, and he gets like three more of jail. Yeah, it's pretty nuts. And I think he's probably old enough to not, you know. And it would be a sort of Jean Valjean,

so I'll seen in the, in the cells. 27601. Can you hear the people think a weird three jazz national anthem? Weirdly, really. Make it great musical. No. Yeah, because Hugh Jackman actually took some time off from the Broadway Music Man production to go to this trial. He's going to be singing as he's the scribe, the singing scribe, if you will.

Music's very important to the two of them. So, yeah, no, I can't wait. Hugh Jackman, Legislative King. Can you keep us informed about what happens? Yeah. This is my dream. This is the perfect podcast. I mean, it makes Australian politics seem relatively unblood thirsty, which is, you know,

It's hard to do, really. Yeah, that's because nobody in Australian politics would ever be cool enough to be in a band. Yeah, none of them are friends either. They're all texting each other. Yeah, the last we had was fucking midnight oil dude, and that was it. Does anyone know who Scott Morrison's best friend is? Isn't it probably Jewish? There's this French guy that I want to introduce them to.

None of the medical advice contained in the Chaser Report should legally be considered medical advice. The Chaser Report. John Delmedico, welcome back. Hi. So I've come here today because Charles has asked me to try to make money for the company. Charles, again, I keep telling you, you need to hire an economic specialist. No, the problem, yeah, because the problem is they cost too much. But people who actually know how to make money, cost a lot of money.

So rather than solve the problem of the money in the company with somebody trained in solving money problems, you'd rather leave it to a bunch of 20-somethings. Yeah, you could get one good person for the price of all these interns, Charles. Have you thought of that? Well, who needs a good person when we have the website Forbes? Like Forbes always has good ways to make money, so I decided to look there for inspiration. See?

Look, that shows initiative, John. Well done. Yeah, so I've looked at Forbes, but not so much the articles, but more the writers. Oh, nice. That's some investigative journalism. Yeah, there's been two writers who have been arrested for laundering $4.8 billion of stolen cryptocurrency.

Oh. What? 4.8 billion? 4.5 billion Australian. Yeah, they stole that much of cryptocurrency, and we're laundering it around. for six years. That's impressive.

That's a pretty impressive effort. Yes, I thought we could learn from them. And so how much have you laundered so far, John? I mean, so far none, but hopefully with the lessons. That's right. I think if any police are listening, he's laundered none. I think before we start laundering money, half of us need to start just doing laundry.

I feel like we've got so many steps to get through before we get to 4.5 billion Australian dollars. But yeah, anyway. It's a good idea because right now, if I'm not, Staking cryptos had a massive, like, crash. And then all the crypto heads are like, oh, we don't conclude from this that it's a stupid form of money. We say, buy the dip. So let's get in now.

Now is it time to get a whole bunch of crypto. Yeah, you always want to start laundering stuff that's running out of money. Yeah. So how did they do? What's the scheme? There's two of them. There's Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan. Now, Heather has made, like, a lot of headlines for some of the, her antics.

I thought we can learn from her, because I think she's an amazing. role model. Okay. So Heather writes about celebrities, uh, girl bosses in industry. Oh. And amazing articles like experts share tips to protect your business from cybercriminals. Hey, you know what? Maybe she's just, she's just a really good investigative journalist because you know what? It takes one to no one. Like you can't write about cyber criminals without becoming one yourself. Yeah. I feel like my first lesson from that is to not write an article about the crimes that you're doing. Like don't call yourself an expert. in whatever, like, in money, like, in stealing cryptocurrency.

I get, it's the perfect, yeah, yeah, yeah. The perfect disguise. No, I just really researched. I read my article. I wouldn't, I wouldn't know how that works. I'm exposing the industry. I'm doing good. I read one of her Girl Boss articles called Got Burnout.

This tech millionaire thinks he should try rapping, which sounds great until... Like sing rapping? Yeah, like rapping, like musical rapping. Okay. So the woman in, the, obviously the business, the CEO in question is herself. So she's written a glowing profile about herself and her history and business. Wow.

In the article, she talks about how she lifted herself up from her bootstraps and launched multiple companies when she decided to abandon her comedy career. Why is this me in 15 years? Which again feels like it's perfect for us because we can just abandon comedy and start. We already have. We work here. So she's laundered $4.5 billion. Yeah. But she's still writing for Forbes.

For Forbes magazine. In what universe does it? I would quit immediately if I laundered $4.5. Yeah, but she's building a personal brand. She's gatekeeping, gaslighting, go bossing, all right? Let her do a thing. What is the scheme? I want to know how she makes that much money.

The scheme was that in 2016, people hacked a bunch of crypto wallets and a company and just stole a bunch of crypto and started transitioning about wallets. And then police ended up thinking out that it was this couple who work at Forbes. So it's just, it's not related to their job at Forbes. They just happen to work at Forbes and also steal money.

It's a side hustle. You've got to have a side hustle. Yeah, Gay, keep gasoline, girl boss. And it sounds like it's a better side hustle. If you're a billionaire, you don't have to have a side hustle anymore. But they still do. Some people love the craft and not the result, Charles. For instance, you don't know what I do on the side.

I could be stealing from Woolworths every single day. And I don't do it because I need to steal from Woolworths. I do it because it's fun. Like Elon Musk has about six side hustles and he ran them all into companies. Well, just like Elon Musk, I think a lot of it is ego based on the actual article itself. She claims in it that she has launched multiple million-dollar companies and she has a perfect template to do it every time off the bootstraps with nothing behind them. She also accuses her former employees of being dishonest and defaming her

and fudging her nonpennies to make her companies look bad and look like some dodgy stuff happened. Right. Which, um, right. And she claims that's the reason why the New York Times didn't run her book about how to launch a perfect million dollar company every time. Which, uh, the article of course misses a couple details, like the fact that a Mark Cuban from American Shark Tank invested $1.5 million into one of her companies. Wow. And also that all these companies were launched two years after she already had the $4.5 billion of crypto, which so much...

So she was launching companies to launder the money. Well, the thing with crypto laundering is you don't need, like you just need wallets. You don't need crypto wallets. You don't need companies. Like it's the reason why... You seem to know a lot. You seem to know a lot about how to launder cryptocurrency. Well, yeah, Charles took my job very seriously and I want to make the taste of

money. He's doing some investigative journalism. It takes one to no one. But my lesson from this is that if you have a million, $1.5 million investor plus billions of dollar money, you can successfully launch a million dollar company. In the article, she talks, she actually points all of her success to her rap persona, Razel Khan. No. We haven't heard any rap yet, John. Wait, sorry, what's her name again? Razel Khan. Razel Khan. That's not even a good fucking rap name. Well, it's because she's like Kangas Khan but with more pizza. What do you mean she's like Genghis Khan? That's how she describes herself is Kangas Khan with more pizza.

Is she white? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. This is horrific. Another mistake that she did make was her business partner called himself Dutch on the crypto black market, but she called herself Razel Khan. Which is sort of... Clearly traceable, right?

Do you know what? We need Razel Khan and two to Koo to write a song together. I mean, don't hate the player, Gabby. I hate the game. Have we got some of this rap? Well, of course, we need to actually listen to the rap to understand what's going on. So I have a small clip. Spirit of a revolutionary power of a dictator.

Love to be contrary, but I'm fly like a gator. I've got pilot blood. I'm a real risk taker. Pirate riding the flood. Badass money make it. Grandmother crocodile. Weirder than an ex-file. Brief fire.

It's silver. So sexy when I slither. Sparkle on my little finger. Hell of arousal. I mean, don't get up your day job, particularly if your day job is worth billions of dollars. Okay, listen, you know what, no, you know what, you know what? I'm a feminist, all right?

All women are deserving of rights. Not her, though. That was, that is like when you tell a group of year eight kids to come up with their first rhyming pattern for poetry and they just kind of make words fit together. Like, I don't know, like just no, why? Why? It's not even a good rap.

Why do people who cannot rap think they can launch a rap career? I mean, it's very Kendall Roy from Succession, is what I'm thinking. But also, clearly the conclusion from this is, isn't it? And I'm sure all the rest of us agree that John should write a rap. Yeah, I mean, I listen to the whole song, and that is the longest verse in the song that's four minutes long. John, can you please rap? Garry some rode microphones are part of the AICAST creator network.

Aguirreysom Road microphones were part of the ACAST creator network. Thank you. up the crypto fraud day, jump, John.