The Chaser Report - The "Schlubs" Have Spoken!

Episode Date: May 25, 2025

Apparently you "schlubs" like our waffling so much that you were bold enough to give Dom and Charles positive feedback. Enjoy this 20 minutes of them feeling all chuffed and good about themselves while it all goes to their heads. ---Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] our caviar addiction: 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 Gadigal 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. Now, we owe you an apology. We asked for feedback earlier in the week. A lot of people said, very kind thing. Really appreciate the feedback. Yes.

But unfortunately, Charles, there's a problem, which we will get into. You were just telling me before. There's a massive problem with our data. A methodological problem. A methodological problem. It's the first methodological problem we've ever had on the Chaser report, and it's going to ruin everything. Yes, what you thought would be a gripping episode about your feedback will turn into a very dry discussion about epistemology. And it's not, to be very clear, it's not your fault, it's entirely our fault.

And yet, Charles, I think we can agree, the listeners are the ones to blame. Oh, definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. More after this. I kind of think it's actually your fault. Oh, dear? Oh, that's sort of my idea. Yeah, okay. We'll get into that after this. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes.

Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. So if you're not sure what the point of this is, are we asked earlier in the week for feedback? on what we do do we want to do the daily episodes of about 15 minutes we just sort of us yamering on should we do longer episodes with more research but less often

no one said we should stop entirely so that is surprising but I guess nice well but no it's not surprising though is it no this is the problem that we have so we were hoping you know that a thousand flowers would bloom in the mouth sense of lots of ideas coming forward

after which we would massacre you all But no, we wanted the range of ideas But Charles, there was a consistency In the responses Which I was not expecting There were probably, I don't know, 15 responses or so Surprisingly many And all email to podcast at chaser.com.com.

And there was a few text messages as well. Did you? Everyone's still got your phone number. And there's lots of, there was a consistency in the responses Which I, in hindsight, perhaps should have respected Charles. Please explain well.

Yes. So I told my wife, who is an academic and who actually has a qualification in knowing how to know things, right? Sure. And she pointed out immediately. I said, oh, we've done a podcast episode. I'm really looking forward to it because it's about, you know, getting feedback from the listeners, won't it be good?

And she immediately went, well, that will be rubbish data because you're asking people who currently listen to a daily show what they would like. And the answer will be the thing that they're already listening. to. It's self-selecting. If people wanted something different, they would have left long ago. We should actually be asking people who left. Yes.

But how would we reach them, Charles? How do we reach them? Mathological spouse of yours? How do we track them down? They've gone. They hate us now. Well, knowing Amanda, she'd probably say go on a rally or start a protest movement or set up a wide-ranging organization.

A social movement. It takes 15 years. We could start a broad-based source. social movement. Yes. Come back to our podcast and tell us why you're left. No, look. But I think overall, the headline results are this has been very gratifying.

And I feel like we should do once a week an episode asking for listener feedback. Because it's been just so nice hearing people sort of say that they listen to us every morning. They spend their morning. And I particularly like the comments where it's like, look, it doesn't really matter what you talk about because I don't really listen. Oh, right. It's just like nice background drone as I'm going for my walk or something. We are the whitest people in white noise.

That makes total sense. Yeah, so I mean, that makes a degree of sense. All right. So it's wrong methodology, but it made us feel good. Yes. And isn't that the real point of research, not to have valid scientific data, but to just tell, didn't we do a long time ago, Charles, as a chase the headline, I think in the first year or so, survey reveals what people who commissioned the survey

wanted it to reveal or something like that or people who funded the survey wanted to find yes yeah so look I think there's people have spoken they have we're going to keep doing daily aren't we I think we're going to have to but I would like to outline a few rules about the

podcast hang on a second before we get to that let's just have a random selection of the comments I'm not sure some people wanted to be anonymous maybe we just make everyone anonymous in case let's call everyone this let's call everyone Craig because um

Okay. There's at least one genuine Craig in the mix here. I love the format that you have already. I listen daily. I'm generally informed of the news by you two. That's not great, Charles. If people are fine, well, then again, maybe that's lovely. It's just the news we're interested in that people get. We're at filter bubble. Yeah, exactly. People didn't know the nationals that left the coalition until they listen. We set the agenda. I think that that's like literally the second or third form of power, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, totally. That's a particularly powerful form of power. It's like having a yarn with that are up to date with the news. And to be clear, that's mates with the listeners, clearly not with each other if you listen to the podcast long enough. I have a long message from somebody asking for Nina to come back. Oh, do you think we wouldn't have Nina back if we could afford Nana? Have you not followed Nina's career?

She's on every TV show. She was like... But I like the idea of actually getting people to come back and, you know, like... Because there's Sammy and... Yeah, Sammy was great. Sammy is great. Check out News Weekly if you want more. Sammy. But that's the solo Sammy, not the chatty Sammy. Yeah, exactly. Well, look, if enough

people listen to the podcast, we can afford to pay them to come back. I think they're going to do it as a favour just quietly. I mean, you know, even though Nina joined us during some of the darkest periods of COVID, when we were all sitting meters apart in a room with very long... How much do you reckon Nina would cost now, those? But just, you know, like, just for one hour appearance? What are we talking? Surely a couple of grand? Or even more as a sign of her success, she'd be like, oh, look, she doesn't need to pay me. Yeah, that's right. What about we pay her in exposure?

We say, you get to come on the Chase's podcast. I think, if anything, we'd be wanting her to pay us by mentioning on Insta or something that she was on it. Yeah, so, I mean, this is nice. This is from Anon. Yeah. He says, I've been listening to you guys since 2020-ish, my goodness. I've been a supporter of most of your work, maybe minus the avocado.

Oh. I'll listen on my way into work in the morning. Love the Daily Boost of Humor, pessimistic for you on politics, and technology, and even occasional rambling. It's a Firth fan. And this person also listens to Pep and would like if we went for 30 minutes so that they could finish listening on the commute home.

Charles, this tells me we need two episodes a day again. One for the morning commute, one for the afternoon. You get a breakfast and a drive show. I kind of feel like we should discount their opinion based on the fact that they listen to Pep. Because I feel like that's... This person has a lot of time. Yeah, that's right.

What do they do? They work for 15 minutes each day. Yeah, like us. Okay, they also liked the personal insights into the Australian political, into the parties and how the interpolitics, the parties can work, which means, so the great thing is I enjoy those too, and because it's all Charles, I have no idea whether they're true. I just like the stories.

Yeah. As we used to say, fact or furs. Well, I think what we should do is I could easily just roll out more anecdotes about, you know, getting drunk with former, you know, now senior politicians. I want to give a shout out to the person who contacted me earlier in the week and mentioned that they used to go drinking with Albo at the Lansdowne Hotel in Chippendale in Sydney

and implied there might be some tales from that day for those days. Oh, yeah, I mean, I've got tales which are completely unbroadcastable from those days. I did note yesterday the entire train system in Sydney broke down, right? And the minister now in charge is John Graham.

Yes, indeed. Special Minister of State and Transport and Arts and Nighttime Economy. He's minister for everything. I was very good friends with at university. I literally, there was a year where I spent most days, you know, hanging out with him, right? When you could get there on the train. And it's so weird seeing him trying to put on a serious face and go, oh, yes, we're going to fix the trains. I mean, that is the job of the Transport Minister in New South Wales is basically take very seriously the problems,

which are largely unsalvable except by building metros. I mean, the only way to fix it in a train system, just to be clear, a huge electrical wire fell on the train and it shut down the network for three hours. Didn't it encase all the people who were inside the train in a sort of an electrified metal sort of framework? Yes, I think they had to be rescued. It was very dangerous.

And again, look, it's just another example. You just have to build more metros. I think we've got to abandon all the trains, all the buses as well. Metroses everywhere. driving drivers out of a job they can all

have a turn of being New South Wales transport minister you can't last long in that job what else

they should automate being the minister like they do like they automate with the metro driverless ministers

yeah ministerless transport that's good ministerless ministry yeah I like it I love it

don't change your name from chaser it has value and provide some kind of foundation for satire

in Australia generous okay yes no okay fair And actually, I was thinking about it. It is useful because John, who's now the editor of The Chaser, is very good at sort of actually, like, it's good to integrate his work ethic with our lack of work ethic.

Because it does actually sort of, I think, lead to an ecosystem of somewhat of an work ethic. I think one of my favourites here is from, I won't mention, I'm not sure if I had to mention the name. It's called this person, Craig. I actually enjoyed the conversation Okay, it's rambling This is sort of a back out and compliment for Charles There are lots of super slick podcasts And I listen to them

That's just thing as a fiss for economics, ABC, NPR But I genuinely enjoy tuning into your relatively unstructured daily chats Your great company with interesting ideas And this person's a subscriber So they put their four bucks a month Where their mouth is or ears are Goodness gracious

Well, yes There's someone else the next one says I just feel really gratified but this is lovely. Oh, nice. The next person just says, you want feedback, really? Have you not seen this episode of utopia?

It doesn't end well for anyone. Then this person says, stick to entertainment, not news or history. Interesting. Only once 15 minutes, doesn't want anything else. Short and sweet,

occasionally with a rant from Charles thrown in about the Labor Party. This is all very achievable to be. Don't be like the Cadbury cream egg or new Coke. You're loyal listener for now, says the person. So that's a threat. Oh, okay.

So, because I was thinking, you know, like part of our rebranding, we could go a different color as well. Oh, goodness. Because at the moment, our liver is all red. I was actually teaching a podcasting class today and thinking about how poor our podcasting tile is because they're supposed to communicate what the podcast is. And you would have no idea what it was unless you knew what the chaser was, which is a diminishing returns in the image. Oh, okay. So should we have our beautiful faces on the, um, is there some way of, of implying newsy but rambling.

I'm not sure. You get that into an image anyway. Any suggestions let us know. I think more images of us are not likely to sell the podcast. Exactly. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore.

FIS is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at FIS.ca. The Chaser Report, more news, less often. Okay, this next person... I kind of like the Chaser Report, because it's clearly got a... It's sort of trying to rip off the BBC World podcast.

Sure, the Global Daily News one. Yeah, but actually it's sort of ripping it off. We've always had, it's always been red, it's been the colour. Yeah. Okay, more focus on daily news and events, so you could have dissected the new... See, this is the... But we did. We talked about the new... We haven't talked about the new liberal Larissa Waters yet.

But this is the problem, right? Like, half the comments are, don't focus on politics. The other half a do figure. This is why you should ever ask the schlubs. That's, and someone used the term schlubs. And that's, I mean, that's the point of doing it, daily is that there's so many of them. They cater for all these things. Someone wants more US election stuff with guests.

15 minutes is good, keep it consistent. I don't think there are going to be any more US elections. So I'm not sure. No, that's true. Oh, this person supports Dave Milner each mother. They don't want to say what they, see what they want. No, they're good. Thank you for that.

They even like it when we put pep in the podcast. That's very strange. But don't we just put a little grab of pep? We only put like half an hour or something. No, that would destroy our careers if we did that. So, okay, so also worth noting, we got like a message at 5.30 a.m. Like, some people are getting up very early in watching this stuff.

Oh, this is why, this is another one. I'm a middle-aged white woman. I cannot work out how to give a rating on the app pod thingy. It would be a five. Oh, see, that's why we're not, we don't get higher sort of in the rankings is because our audience doesn't understand. Our audience is too fucking incompetent. Made up of schlubs.

Slubs. What else? There's someone from Canada here saying greetings from Canada. Oh, we should cover Canada. Local politics. It'd be good to learn more about Australia's portrait. I've got a few stories to tell about Justin Trudeau. Economic.

Me and him go way back. Yeah, right. You just to drink at the Lansdown Hotel, did you? This person wants to know more about Australia's political and economic dealings with Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Singapore and other countries in the region. This is not the podcast for you, friend. I know I was considering this Canada be boring. That's a spy. Don't you think?

This is Hamish and Andy. Could be. Yes, this person also has the job. They're wanting to tank our podcast by getting us to talk about Malaysia's economy. This person also has the job creative consultant. I'm not sure I know that Oz considers Canada to be boring

but it will be cool to know more okay they don't take advice with Canadians this person yeah 556 a.m. wants it daily likes it when we're both on and then the earliest one

527 a.m unless this person's in New Zealand that's crazy and no they've written they've read writing at 530 in the morning so they got up early enough to listen to us yes

and then write a thing buy 530 and send it And what does it say? It's a twisted and entertaining way to start the morning. I like the length. I like that it's not hours of waffle. So it is waffle, but it's at a convenient size. This person likes Welcome to the Future because I know it's about stupid shit

and nothing that is important enough to be the end of the world like politics sometimes is. You're not listening to the episodes properly if you think it's not going to be the end of the world. Sorry, I can't be funny. It's 5.30 in the morning. Yeah, fair enough. That's nice. Well, look, these are very nice messages. So I think we should set some rules going forward.

I think the first one is I think we need to not do the podcast during school holidays. Because every time the school holidays comes around, we go, hey, no, it'll be all right. We'll be able to fit it in. And then we just can't. And then we just sort of fail to completely do that. So I think we just need to just know ourselves a bit more and go, between the school holidays, it's school holidays.

sucks to be somebody who doesn't have kids. If we have enough money from the, you know, increased income made from all the listeners-cented feedback, we can hire filling people to do it. Oh, yes. And we should get people who are just slightly more mediocre than us so that we don't get supplanted. I was thinking we could pay Nina a large amount of money. No, she wouldn't do it. We can ask it.

That's true. You want your filling presented to be not as good as you. That's a mistake. before, let's not have that anymore. No, well, that, but that... Who would it be? Who would we get? It's got to be...

If Chris Taylor was here, he'd say Peter Luck. He always wanted Peter Luck. Peter Luck, unfortunately, no longer with us. But he always wanted to put Peter Luck-based material into the TV shows. Well, but the counter example to that is actually that... Oh, you get somebody who's a bright, shining star who props up your ratings. Yes, and then you spin them off into a side podcast. Oh, but, or there's...

so busy and successful that they don't want to do a daily podcast anyway that would be good okay so why don't we get um Craig and Taylor Swift something but yeah the other point to make is that I mean so for a radio show when you do that I mean the radio show has to exist you've got to have a show that's on I don't know from from 8 till 10 in the morning or whatever yeah whether we that was there be dead air maybe we shouldn't have fill-ins because if people if the if people if if the carefully selected listeners who already like our show yeah like us no Then maybe we should just not bother.

Exactly. I think that's right. I think the whole point is you just, like, podcasting is not the same as radio. It's just literally, you know, like you listen to the rest of history because of Tom and Dom. It's not because of, you know. Podcasting's finest, Dom. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so maybe what we should do is to set people a homework calendar that got to listen. Find the old episode where we mention whatever and win a prize to drive the back catalog. And what we could do is we could also get Loughlin to do, you know how at radio stations, if you're on holidays, they do the best of the Chesa Report or whatever. Yeah, we could make Lachlan, like, introduce the best of. They're on holidays this week, but here's some wonderful witty ramblings that happened last October. Or more appropriately to just pay the shit out of us while we're away. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's not about it because it's good to keep the feed ticking over.

The other thing is, I think we should have more structured episodes. Oh, what? I think it would be nice, like, once a month or something like that to have Lachlan come on and do a producer's notes. Oh, yeah? Yeah, yeah. Because I think, like, if we're saying Welcome to the Future works as a concept, we could probably come up with half a dozen occasional sort of structured things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. For when there's nothing really on. Like, occasionally, you know, you and I will sit down and go, what the fuck are we going to talk about? and then we go, I don't know, why don't we ask the listeners for feedback or some stupid idea like that. That's good. Yeah, I mean, we should do the US ones fairly often, I think.

Yeah, and we do it. Yes, because there's so much to talk about, like the big beautiful bill that Donald Trump's doing at the moment. Big beautiful bill. We should do an episode about that. Maybe we will. Yeah, maybe we will. Okay, should we go back to,

so we experimented at one point with doing the live episode, but we didn't have enough notice in the way that. There were sort of 10 people listening. But if we made that a regular, as in like, live streaming episodes, Al-a-Rest is politics. Well, this is the thing. I was wondering whether we should set up a discord like everyone else has. Oh, yeah.

Just for paying subscribers. And that'd be the way that we collate questions and things like that. Yeah, and when we do live, if we do a live episode, we can put it on there. Because we're not going to be able to make the same time every week. That's just wouldn't work. No, exactly. That's the beauty of podcasting. It's published at the same time.

It's not recorded at the same time. Yes. So, yeah, that way we could publicize that and get people to pay the four bucks a month if they give enough of a shit to want to. talk to us on Discord. Yeah. I think we're just having our creative meeting on the podcast today. And I think the other thing is, what is overwhelmingly true is no one's gone, oh my God,

I really want a video version of this podcast. No. Right. And so my thinking is we just every month or so video ourselves in the nice studio. Yeah, or even we can potentially get it up to weekly at some point. And get, and then cut it up as social media content and that just be done as a, a sort of marketing tool. Yeah, we can do like a special episode, like the best episode of the week or whatever

the big story is or something. Prepare that or if you've got a guest. It'd be nice to do guest interviews in the nice studio. Yes, Taylor Swift. You're Taylor Swift. Yeah, Nina O'Yama. Have you just discovered the existence of Taylor Swift? It's like Charles has found this shiny new person.

All right. So that's the other thing Charles we've discovered is people like the 15 minute duration. So that means this is the end. See ya. See ya. See ya. You asked for it. brevity is the soul of podcasting

thank you for your patience your call is important can't take being on hold anymore FIS is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes mobile plans start at $15 a month certain conditions apply details at fizz.ca