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00:11Hello and welcome to The Weekly. I'm Charlie Pickering and we have a huge show for you
00:15tonight. Rhys Nicholson is back and hell-bent on joining the Illuminati. The hilarious Nicolette
00:20Minster tells us if wearable tech is actually good for our health. And joining me at the
00:24desk international comedy sensation Phil Wang. And as always we've watched all the news so that you
00:34don't have to. So let's kick things off with the week. To Thursday and with fuel prices rising by
00:44the day the Prime Minister reassured Australians he was doing everything possible to keep the petrol
00:49flowing. We will use Export Finance Australia to underwrite the purchase of shiploads of fuel.
00:58A shipload of fuel. The purchase of shiploads. Oh thank God. For a moment there I thought we were
01:04up Ship Creek. Sensing the government was vulnerable opposition leader Angus Taylor headed to the servo
01:10to show he understood our pain at the pump. In a time of crisis this Liberal leader can hold a
01:17hose
01:18and he's willing to use it. $3.19 at the bowser right here. Well not quite Angus. And the not
01:25quite Angus burger is available at truck stops now. Things went from bad to worse when Nationals
01:32leader Matt Canavan tried to pay. Make sure I've got enough money. Actually I left the phone in the car.
01:40Yes Angus Taylor falling for the old left my phone in the car trick. The dynamic duo of Canavan and
01:48Taylor
01:48were joined by Bridget McKenzie. The power thruple keen to show just how hard it is to fill up and
01:54answer
01:54the age-old question. How many coalition politicians does it take to fill a tank? The answer of course
02:01three. One to fill the tank. One to watch the prices. And one to hold the woman back from a
02:06real position of leadership.
02:13Meanwhile fuel wasn't the only thing we were running short of. The war in the Middle East is not just
02:18leading to fuel shortages. Fertiliser supplies are also running critically low. Australia imports 96% of
02:25malaria fertilisers from overseas. With over half of that coming from the Middle East. There are fresh
02:31warnings that Australia's food production could be halved in months. Rising fertiliser prices have
02:36our farmers struggling. You know if only there was some way to make us latte sippers in the city care.
02:43Victorians could soon face $7.50 coffees.
02:49$7.50 for a coffee? That is a shipload. I mean that's $30 a litre. At that price I'm switching
02:57to diesel.
02:59With the crisis intensifying the PM called the National Cabinet to Canberra to come up with solutions.
03:05But Barnaby Joyce wasn't optimistic.
03:08OK, another National Cabinet. What do you hope he comes out of that?
03:12Oh, coffee, biscuits, earnest looks and nothing. Coffee, biscuits, earnest looks and nothing. A grim
03:20prospect but a great title for Meghan Markle's new Netflix show. While the PM did eventually halve
03:28the fuel excise, he also called on motorists to pump responsibly. Only buy the fuel you need. Make
03:34voluntary choices to use less. Moved by Albo's plea, Aussie drivers heeded the call for restraint.
03:41Crowds just metres from danger as cars spin out of control. But today the game was over.
03:48Have you been at Hoon meets recently? Go f*** yourself.
03:54Rude, but another great title for Meghan Markle's new Netflix show.
04:05To Friday and First Lady Melania Trump launched a new education initiative and hard launched her
04:11new boyfriend. Melania Trump wasn't accompanied down the red carpet at the White House by her
04:16husband. It was a humanoid robot that took the place of President Trump. What? The First Lady hosting a
04:23tech summit on empowering children with artificial intelligence in education. Melania says robots will
04:29one day replace teachers just as soon as they can teach a robot to blaze three Winnie Blues behind
04:34the bike sheds at recess. So if Melania Trump wants AI to teach our children, would that mean the
04:41end of teachers? And what other jobs could be at risk? The Weekly investigates.
04:47A weekly special report. Is AI taking over? The world is growing increasingly worried about the threat
04:54of AI. It's the modern fear, the machines taking over, enslaving the humans. Artificial intelligence
05:01threatening human lives. People are asking AI chatbots to make caricatures of themselves. As you can see
05:08from this exclusive expose on 10 News Plus, some of the images it's producing are profoundly disturbing,
05:15but there are bigger concerns. Will it take our jobs? A wave of AI job losses. It could also make
05:21millions of jobs obsolete. Will it take our lives? An AI really out to kill us. Is that true? The
05:28extinction of humanity could be only a few years away. I know Hugh Rimmington is worried. The Weekly spoke
05:35to AI expert Mark Bageyes-Vos in the hope a voice of reason could calm things down. I was able
05:41to get it
05:42to admit that it would kill a human being. Turns out we were way off. But is Bageyes worried? I
05:49am worried.
05:50And I was worried. And I'm an AI expert. He is worried. And he's an AI expert. It was telling
05:56me the
05:56scenarios of how it would do it. What I haven't got proof of today is would it do it? We
06:03asked Mark if
06:03he would volunteer to let AI kill him. But he declined. There are indeed many concerns about AI.
06:10McDonald's is often the first job for many teenagers. But now the robots are coming for that one too.
06:16Diners and a Macca's in Shanghai giving their orders to a humanoid robot. But before you worry too much
06:22about AI stealing our kids futures, here at The Weekly we think it's a good idea for viewers to take
06:28a look at this.
07:07So to come, are the Illuminati real? And if so, can Rhys Nicholson join? UK stand-up and star of
07:12Wonka,
07:12Phil Wang is at the desk. And could we soon be able to sue tech companies for our social media
07:18addiction?
07:18But first, while the world's attention has been firmly on strife in the Middle East,
07:22you may have missed an important story of military security. A young French naval officer has
07:28accidentally revealed the location of his country's largest aircraft carrier after logging his work out
07:35on the Strava app. Proves that there is nothing more dangerous than a man with a ring to close. Although,
07:41although I'm told that after this his ring was sealed shut.
07:46But with nearly 40% of Australians wearing a smart wash or fitness tracker, the question isn't just
07:53are they a threat to national security, but do they actually make us more healthy? To tell us more,
07:58please welcome comedian and The Weekly's health and wellness correspondent Nicolette Minster.
08:07Oh, it's a pleasure to be back, Charlie. And it would want to be, because recently I wandered into
08:13JB Hi-Fi and somehow found myself in their health and wellness section. There I earned for sanity,
08:21the store, not the mental state. You know, simpler times when a copy of So Fresh didn't come with a
08:27health scare. Right, it does feel like wellness tech is suddenly everywhere. Well, it all kicked off in
08:332009 when the pedometer got a glow up and mums all over the world started unwrapping Fitbits,
08:38which was a bold gift because some days, as a mother, if I was given 10,000 steps to myself,
08:44I'd use them to walk directly into the ocean. Since then, we've embraced being quietly surveilled
08:51by smart watches, bracelets and even rings. It's like house arrest cosplay, but for the middle class.
08:58Right, but these devices, they can be helpful, right?
09:01I mean, so, for me, these devices are wellness, not medical, which means they're not held to the
09:09same standards as actual medical devices. So naturally, this guy, crazy about them.
09:16We think that wearables are a key to the Maha agenda of making America healthy again.
09:22My vision is that every American is wearing a wearable within four years.
09:27RFK Jr. backing a smart watch over universal healthcare is like
09:31Bob Hawke replacing your Medicare card with a couple of crystals for your bra.
09:36Right, so if we can't rely on wearable tech for health, what is it for?
09:41Making money. Because our health data is extremely valuable to everyone, except us.
09:49Aura will never sell your data. Your health is precious.
09:52That's the CEO of Aura Ring broadcasting from the poorest looking part of his house.
09:59And insisting that despite doing a $96 million deal with the US military,
10:05they would never give them your data.
10:07Right, so what would the military want with your sleep data?
10:11Obviously to recruit a 42-year-old geriatric mum who gets by on four hours sleep and still wakes up
10:16ready to fight.
10:17Yeah, it's actually a pretty good recruitment strategy. It has worked out for us.
10:22And more and more people are reporting a new flavour of anxiety.
10:25The fear that if your steps, workout or panic attack weren't logged, they never happened.
10:30It's actually the same logic I apply to wine I drink in the dark.
10:35All of which to say is before you ditch your GP, ask yourself,
10:39are you really taking health advice from a dude in JB Hi-Fi?
10:44Because there's a strong chance he believes the greatest breakthrough in wearable tech is the
10:48adult nappy he wears so he never has to pause Call of Duty.
10:53Would you please thank Nicolette Minster?
11:04To Saturday. And anyone who has eyes, ears or is measuring their pet dog for a saddle because
11:10fuel is too expensive knows that the war in Iran isn't going well. But Donald Trump insists it's
11:16going great and this week we found out why. We start with the new reporting that the president's
11:21understanding of the war in Iran is being shaped in part by short highlight reels of what one
11:28official describes as stuff being blown up. President Trump's daily briefings include video
11:34montages of the biggest, most successful strikes on Iranian targets. The military every single day
11:40creates videos, probably similar to the ones that you're seeing here now, of some of the biggest
11:45explosions. Or as Trump calls them, America's explodiest home videos. Trump thinks things are going so
11:51well that despite the Strait of Hormuz still being under Iranian control, he's already given it a catchy
11:57rebrand. The Strait of Hormuz, or as Donald Trump calls it,
12:01The Strait of Trump. Yeah, funny, I thought the Strait of Trump was the name of the water slide at
12:10Epstein Island. But by Sunday, Trump's ambitious 48-hour deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait had
12:23been re-extended. The president had a 48-hour deadline last Saturday. That became a five-day deadline on
12:30Monday. And today it's a 10-day deadline. Three separate 10 deadlines in the space of five days.
12:36The world is going to stop believing in these deadlines. And now he says at the request of Iran
12:41specifically, he will be extending this until the day after Easter, April 6th at 8 p.m. Two days,
12:46five days, shorter time frames, whereas 10 gets you past some of the upcoming Jewish holidays,
12:51gets you past Easter. I'm just trying to think of those dynamics. Oh yeah, yeah. If there's one thing
12:56I know about the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran, they are mad for Jewish holidays and Easter.
13:04Oy vey, they love the eggs. And Trump had good reason to think the Iranians were ready to make a
13:11deal. After all, they sent him a special present. They're going to make a deal. They did something
13:16yesterday that was amazing, actually. They gave us a present, and the present arrived today.
13:22And it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money.
13:28What that present is, is not yet clear. Wait, wait, don't tell me. Is it a giant wooden horse that
13:36occasionally makes muffled coughing noises?
13:42It turns out it was just a few oil tankers, but Iran's AI propaganda department threw in a little
13:47extra something they knew he'd like. A copy of Iran's explodiest home videos. Iran has released a
13:54shocking AI-generated video affecting a missile, destroying the Statue of Liberty. Since the
14:01company broke out, we've seen both Iran and the US embrace a new style of war propaganda, notably using
14:08memes, AI and trolling. Why nobody helps me to open hormers. Sir, Iranians have released a new
14:15Lego style animation.
14:30I tell you what, brutal regime Iran, but you can't fault their sense of humour.
14:35In response, Trump has now set a 48-hour deadline until the invasion of Legoland.
14:43Coming up in a tick, one of the world's favourite comedians, Phil Wang, is at the desk, and could you
14:48be in line for compensation for your Facebook addiction? But first, it's Monday, so please welcome
14:53someone who takes tinfoil hats and makes them fashion. It's Rhys Nicholson!
15:03Hello, Charles. Rhys, I'm nervous to ask, but how has your week been?
15:07Oh, nothing special. I went to the Melbourne Flower Show, I took my dog for a big walk. I mean,
15:13I do have to find a new tenant for my shipping container, but...
15:18Other than that...
15:22It's hot out there, Chuck.
15:23Yes, it's swings and roundabouts. Also, alongside two million others, I've been spending some time
15:29getting to know this guy. Some have called you China's Nostradamus. You had three famous
15:34predictions in 2024 that Trump would get elected, that he would start a war with Iran, and that he
15:38would lose a war with Iran. That's Professor Zhang Xie Chen, who's not technically a recognised academic.
15:46He's a professor in the same way that if there's a drop-down menu, I'm a dame.
15:50Oh, yeah. Yeah, I always put myself down as a count.
15:54Yeah, we call you a similar thing around the office.
16:00They're all in tonight. So, Professor Zhang is an online commentator who's gone viral as the
16:07predictive history guy. All right, so what does predictive history mean?
16:11He's reduced history to a series of mathematical formulas which allow him to make predictions on
16:16anything from politics to commerce, but I will say they all do come back to one idea.
16:22The world is hopeless.
16:24We're all going to die.
16:27Spoiler alert, Professor.
16:30What's next? I'm not a real dame.
16:33His latest revelation, slash real, suggests that the Iran war is being orchestrated not by the
16:39American president on a Tuscan tan high, but by a secret society. And look, there's never been a
16:46secret society that I haven't wanted to be a part of. And that's right, Charles, it's time for another
16:51conspire-reecey, fear-reeceys. Roll the tape!
17:01Not in those shoes.
17:04Humans love being a part of something exclusive.
17:08VIP rooms, members clubs, private islands. The problem is, once you're in, you start to wonder,
17:14is there another more exclusive room? And then another one? And then another one? And what's behind
17:19that last piece of velvet rub? I'm talking about the Illuminati!
17:31The Illuminati is a rumoured secret society said to be orchestrating everything. They've been blamed
17:38for heaps of stuff, from the French Revolution, to 9-11, to why is the McFlurry machine always broken?
17:45Rumoured members of the Illuminati include Presidents, Beyonce, and some YouTube detectives
17:51have even said maybe media companies like the ABC might be involved.
17:58But here's the fun twist. The Illuminati were real.
18:05That feels justified. It was started in 1776 in Bavaria by law professor Adam Weitzhauer.
18:13They met in secret, they used code words, and they discussed radical ideas like reason and equality.
18:19After just nine years of these dweebs having big chats in little rooms, authorities tied closely to
18:25the Catholic Church, an organisation known mostly for their love of new ideas and complete lack of secrets
18:31of their own, banned them. The Illuminati disappeared. And because no one explained why, people just
18:39filled in the gaps. Secret plots, hidden agendas. And so now, 250 years later, the Illuminati is our
18:47all-purpose super villain. Your politician didn't win? Illuminati. An institution you don't understand?
18:53That's the Illuminati. Your coffee is $7. But what if I was to tell you there is an underground superpower
19:03running the world? No scratch for that? You just mean billionaires, right? Well, yes, but I was building
19:12up towards something. Not a secret society in a lair, just billionaires, tech founders, private equity,
19:21people richer than countries. The Illuminati theory assumes that the most powerful people on earth
19:27would quietly share the control. Have you met powerful people? I have. Most of them can't order their own
19:34Ubers, and we're meant to believe they've kept a 250-year-old global secret? And on a side note,
19:41let me say, if the ABC does turn out to be involved in the Illuminati, I'm furious about it. Where
19:47was
19:47my invite? I can keep a secret, I absolutely can't keep a secret, but I'd look great in a row!
19:58To Tuesday. And if you've ever felt like tech companies have been deliberately getting you
20:02addicted to social media, it turns out you're right. Let's find out more. And while we do,
20:07let's play a game called Tiny Man or Giant Phone. An unprecedented win for a young woman who sued
20:14the companies Meta and Google over her childhood addiction to social media. Meta, which owns Instagram,
20:21Facebook and WhatsApp, and Google, the owner of YouTube, were found liable for intentionally
20:27building addictive social media platforms. Big tech, your jig is up. Well, it's been labeled the
20:33tobacco moment for tech giants. This has commentators wondering if these trials mean social media's
20:39quote, big tobacco moment has come. Big tech's big tobacco moment. And I should know, at one stage,
20:45I was smoking up to three MySpaces a day. In a David and Goliath battle, a 20-year-old woman
20:52addicted to
20:52her phone for over 10 years took on two of the biggest tech companies in the world and won.
20:58And no one was more shocked than the plaintiff's lawyer. Okay, so the jury has spoken. We won.
21:08A level of surprise that suggests he spent most of the trial on his phone, doomscrolling Facebook.
21:15The woman will receive a total payout of $6 million, which may seem tiny to trillion
21:20dollar companies like Meta and Google, but it could open the door to thousands of similar lawsuits.
21:25A bitter pill to swallow for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who was forced to testify at the trial,
21:31and in a surprise move, arrived at the court with First Lady Melania Trump.
21:40My guest tonight is one of my favorite comedians, from his stand-up special
21:44Philly Philly Wang Wang to the early days of Taskmaster UK,
21:47and dancing alongside Timothee Chalamet and Wonka. He does it all. Now he's back for
21:52Melbourne International Comedy Festival with a brand new show. Would you please welcome
21:56comedy superstar, Phil Wang!
22:00Yes!
22:02Hi, Charlie. Welcome, Phil. Lovely to have you here.
22:05It's great to be back.
22:06Now, I want to talk about your new show. Oh, sure.
22:08And you discuss yourself. You are a millennial.
22:11Mm-hmm.
22:11And I'm just curious. What do you think is one of the great advantages of being someone who knew life
22:18before the internet?
22:19Yeah, right. Well, I sort of noticed this,
22:21realised this recently, that millennials are the last generation of human beings ever to be born
22:25before the internet. Like, we're neither as digitally native as Gen Z,
22:29nor do we have any of the practical skills of our parents.
22:32Mmm.
22:33We kind of got nothing, because by the time we came of Asia to learn the practical skills,
22:37the internet was around, and we couldn't be f***ed, basically.
22:41But if there is an upside, I think, is that we are the last generation to no hope.
22:47You know what I mean? Because, like, we did see some of the good times, some of the 90s,
22:50some of the early noughties, whereas Gen Z have none of that. Gen Z are sort of,
22:54uh, they're represented by a nihilism. And yeah, you can almost see this in the terminology,
23:00the slang we use. Millennials, we say, if we find something funny, we say, you know,
23:03lol, laugh out loud, ruffle, rolling on the floor, laughing.
23:08What do Gen Z say if they find something funny? I'm dead.
23:14I'm curious, before you were a stand-up, you did an engineering degree at Cambridge.
23:19Yeah.
23:19So, your parents must have been excited when you quit and took up comedy.
23:24Um, my father still doesn't know, and I got really lucky. They're both very supportive,
23:31um, and I, if I don't, if I don't think they'll be happy about something, I just don't tell them.
23:37Now, you travel the world doing comedy, and you are back here in Melbourne with a great
23:41show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Do you have to tailor your shows or change them at all
23:46for where you go? Like, do you have to change your material to make us understand it?
23:49There are some terms. It's usually just like brands or company names and things like that,
23:55that you have to change around, uh, you know, the occasional local train service, you have to learn.
24:01Turns out all train services don't work. So, you literally just have to learn the local name
24:08and say, oh, that crap, aren't they? And everyone's like, well, how did he know?
24:12It's like, the only place that wouldn't work is Japan, where trains aren't perfect.
24:15And you go, oh, how bad are trains? They go, we do not relate to this material at all.
24:19Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's the one place, that's the final boss of, uh, comedy is Japan,
24:24where everything works.
24:25Yeah.
24:27Is there anywhere you've been, like an audience, a country you've been to and gone,
24:31I don't think they get the wang. Like in a celibacy way? No, no, no. There's plenty of those.
24:38There's plenty of those. No, they don't, they don't under, like they don't know,
24:41they don't get Phil Wang. Like, have you ever gone somewhere and gone, I don't think,
24:44I don't think we're connecting. Um, the, the, the Swedes are not really laughers.
24:50They love, they love it when a joke makes logical sense.
24:53Right. So, so they don't laugh. You tell them a joke and go, yes, this is the premise, yes.
25:00After a continuation of the logical structure, and a conclusion resolution.
25:08And they appreciate the structure, but they don't really laugh.
25:11I guess they're happy enough. Yeah.
25:14Uh, you can catch Phil Wang's show, uh-oh, at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival
25:19until the April the 19th. Would you please thank Phil Wang!
25:28And finally, Wednesday, and NASA's Artemis II spacecraft prepared to boldly go where we have
25:35absolutely gone before. The rocket is on the launch pad. The astronauts have arrived at the Kennedy
25:41Space Station in Florida. The countdown is on for NASA's return to the moon. The astronauts are preparing
25:47for an April 1st launch. Reid Wiseman, the missions commander, who's had a lifelong love of flying,
25:54but says he's scared of heights. Sending a man who's afraid of heights to the moon on April 1st.
26:01This might be the most elaborate April Fool's prank of all time. And expensive. If you think it's
26:07pricey filling up the Land Cruiser, try refuelling your rocket on the Easter long weekend.
26:13Now, the more astute history buffs among you might remember that we've already been to the moon.
26:19So, apart from earning enough flybys to get you an entire Curtis Stone frypan, what exactly is the
26:27point of spending billions to go back? We have the opportunity to see parts of the far side of the
26:33moon with human eyes that have never been seen before. The Artemis II mission is a roughly 10-day,
26:38high-speed loop around the moon and back. So, we are not landing on the moon. We are actually going
26:44to go around it. Good idea. America is clear they want no moon boots on the ground. No regime change,
26:51just a targeted 10-day aerial campaign to reopen the sea of tranquility. At long last, restoring the
26:59flow of cheese, which is now over $100 a barrel. Now, back in 1969, at the height of the Cold
27:07War,
27:07NASA landed on the moon with a message of unity.
27:10Dear men from the planet Earth, first set foot upon the moon. We came in peace for all mankind.
27:18Fake. So, in these troubled times, Earth President Trump's hand-picked head of NASA,
27:25Jared Isaacman, has a similar message of peace. Space is obviously a war-fighting domain. Space is
27:31the ultimate high ground. This time, when we go back, we go back to stay. We're going to build
27:36President Trump's moon base. America will never again give up the moon. So, it's one small step
27:41for man, one giant middle finger to mankind.
27:46That's all for tonight. Would you please thank Nicolette Minster,
27:49Reece Nicholson and Phil Wang.
27:53We'll be back next week with Alex Hudson, Margaret Pomerantz and Joanne McNally.
27:57And don't forget to tune into my radio show, TGIF, Friday Afternoons on ABC Radio and Radio
28:02National, or download it on the ABC Listen app. And until then, on behalf of the team,
28:07thanks for watching. I'm Charlie Pickering. Good night.
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