Summary
It’s episode 600 and things get random as always—no live audience this year, but there’s plenty to talk about. There’s tales from a metal detecting rally, TEDx speaker stories, and the chaos of dynamic burger pricing at McDonald’s. Listener messages roll in from around the globe, a skink gets life-saving surgery, and New Zealand fisheries crack down in epic fashion.
Links
Noah’s Ark Site Being Drilled
Smart Fridges Get Bricked
Fiji Corruption
Helicopter Company has to Forfeit it’s Helicopters
Vet performs surgery on 4 gram patient
Meta Muse being a Dick
McDonalds Advertising
McDonalds Crazy Dynamic Pricing
Show Transcript
This transcript was generated by an AI and may not be100% accurate. It pays to listen to the podcast, but if you have questions about any of the information found here, please reach out to us.
Sam [00:00:08]:
Hello and welcome to episode 600 of the Chris and Sam Podcast.
Chris [00:00:27]:
I’m Chris.
Sam [00:00:28]:
And I’m Sam. Welcome along to your weekly fix of Randomist Technology and Life. Hey, we’ve been going, what, 12 years now?
Chris [00:00:34]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:00:35]:
Absolutely mind-blowing. It’s just us. Lock in. This is probably going to be a long episode. Uh, for whatever reason, we’ve got some stuff to talk about, but we do not have an audience this year. We didn’t do that.
Chris [00:00:46]:
No, no live show this year.
Chris [00:00:48]:
No live show.
Sam [00:00:49]:
Uh, just due to logistics and Logistics, basically.
Chris [00:00:53]:
Logistics more than anything else. But I mean, you know, 500 was a big number, like half century. That was a big number. So we did a live show for that. Maybe.
Sam [00:01:02]:
Maybe in 2 years we’ll do 700.
Chris [00:01:04]:
Yeah. So yeah, we might do the 750 just to mix it up.
Sam [00:01:09]:
By then they should have rebuilt you. I hope so.
Chris [00:01:13]:
I bloody hope so. Yes.
Sam [00:01:16]:
If you’re new, welcome. This is the podcast where we talk about random technology and life. And, uh, we’ve got some stuff happening. We’re going to actually also include a bit of audio from some of our fans that have left a message at tcas.com. But if you hear this and you want to be part of the podcast in the future, don’t worry, that’s always going to be there. It’s a permanent fixture on the website.
Chris [00:01:39]:
So you can go to the website, go to fan up the top right-hand side.
Sam [00:01:42]:
Just up the top in the menu, you’ll see it.
Chris [00:01:44]:
Yeah. And then click on that and then you can leave a message for us. And if we like your message, we’ll put it in the podcast.
Sam [00:01:50]:
That’s right. And as always, I want to hear from the really weird random people. I heard through someone else that someone else in a different department at work had listened to the podcast. They weren’t really sure what it was about, but they’d listened to it. They’re not going to go into the back catalog, but I think they are listening. And they also queried how we made money from this. And the other person goes, I don’t think they do.
Chris [00:02:16]:
Uh, which is— if you’ve got any ideas on how we could make money from this, please leave a voicemail message. detailing how you do that.
Sam [00:02:26]:
We’re 600 episodes in, we’re not making any money, uh, now or in the future. Uh, the New Zealand Podcast Awards are coming up in about a week’s time.
Chris [00:02:34]:
All right.
Sam [00:02:35]:
And I quickly looked at it today just for, uh, shits and giggles. And, uh, there’s almost no category that we fit in and it’s $50 for every category you want to enter. So it’s really just for these big name radio backed podcasts, it seems. And I was like, oh, I wonder if we could make a crappy award for average podcasters, the New Zealand Average Podcasters Award, where you get an award if you’ve done more than—
Chris [00:03:01]:
New Zealand’s, the Waike— well, no, New Zealand’s number one lifestyle podcast.
Sam [00:03:06]:
I still don’t agree with lifestyle, but there’s nothing else I can think of. Uh, but you could give it an award for anybody that’s made more than 10 episodes. Yeah. Because we are, by fluke, I guess, one of the longest running podcasts in New Zealand.
Chris [00:03:20]:
Yeah, we’re just too stupid to give up.
Sam [00:03:22]:
We’re in the mix. Yes, and we’ve broken every podcasting rule that’s out there.
Chris [00:03:27]:
Pretty much, pretty much. And people give you, you know, ask for advice. It’s like, yeah, do this. That’s not what we did, but you should do this. Yeah, do this. It’s not what we did, but that’s what you should do.
Sam [00:03:38]:
And I think you have to be a certain mix of a person to do it the way we’ve done it.
Chris [00:03:43]:
Yeah. Um, I mean, the reason we, we’re still doing it is because there’s 2 of us. You could not do this yourself. I, you just, ugh.
Sam [00:03:53]:
And also having guests all the time. Oh, that’d be terrible.
Chris [00:03:57]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:03:57]:
Not, not, not, not that guests would be terrible, but organizing that and tying people down. Uh, I do feel like that making this podcast now is like muscle memory. Like it’s every week, usually it’s pretty scheduled for us. I don’t know. Because someone said, when would you stop? And I said, I don’t know. One of us will probably just die.
Chris [00:04:19]:
Pretty much. Pretty much.
Sam [00:04:20]:
Maybe. What have you been up to this week? Let’s cover that first.
Chris [00:04:24]:
Okay. So, well, yesterday I was doing a workshop in Paoni, California.
Sam [00:04:34]:
Yeah, of course you were. Good.
Chris [00:04:36]:
I know. It really was. It took me a little bit by surprise. So I got invited to this women’s community It’s a Thrive community on school. It’s about health and stuff.
Sam [00:04:45]:
What’s a Thrive community?
Chris [00:04:48]:
Her community is called Thrive.
Sam [00:04:49]:
Okay.
Chris [00:04:51]:
Yeah. So it’s Thrive community on school. It’s about health and stuff. I’m like, uh, uh, um, what? And she goes, no, I want you to speak for our Speak Well Club.
Sam [00:05:00]:
Okay.
Chris [00:05:00]:
Speak Well. That makes sense. What has that got to do with Thrive? Like I, I missed the boat there a little bit, but I wasn’t asking any questions. I’m like, yep. I’ll be there. Give me a time. Zoom. Boom.
Chris [00:05:13]:
There I am. No, it’s an actual physical meeting in this library in Paoni in California. Hang on.
Sam [00:05:22]:
So your face is beaming into these people’s— how many people are there? Do you know?
Chris [00:05:27]:
Uh, there wasn’t that many. There was 4 or 5.
Sam [00:05:29]:
Okay. Can you see them?
Chris [00:05:31]:
Uh, they came over and waved at the laptop.
Sam [00:05:33]:
Yeah. Well, I mean, if there’s only 4 or 5 of them, that’s doable.
Chris [00:05:36]:
But they, uh, basically were sitting down looking at the big screen because there was a big screen with my face on it.
Sam [00:05:41]:
And was it just you or was it a whole—
Chris [00:05:43]:
just me. Okay. I did a 1-hour masterclass.
Sam [00:05:46]:
So they wrangled these people together and it’s a Speak Well Club.
Chris [00:05:50]:
They regularly catch up.
Sam [00:05:52]:
Okay.
Chris [00:05:52]:
I spoke for an hour.
Sam [00:05:54]:
Yes.
Chris [00:05:54]:
That’s what they asked me to. So I did 57 minutes and then, um, then they said, oh, and now we’re going to— and I hang around for this— now we’re going to listen to the next section of the TEDx. Um, so TED has its, um, online course on speaking.
Sam [00:06:09]:
Oh, okay.
Chris [00:06:10]:
So I sat in for—
Sam [00:06:11]:
so their goal To do a TEDx or TED or something?
Chris [00:06:14]:
Yeah. Yeah. So most of them, I think they were in a, what do you call it? Toastmasters? Yeah.
Sam [00:06:19]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:06:19]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:06:19]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:06:20]:
So I talked a bit about that. So it was interesting. And then there were a couple, so I invited a few people from my community. So there were a few people online as well watching it on Zoom. And then like one person from New Zealand, I was like, oh, there’s somebody from New Zealand here. Stephen, you don’t know Stephen, do you? I’m like, no, I don’t know Stephen. Stephen goes, yes, you do. And then he went on camera and went, oh yeah, I know Steven because we’re in New Zealand.
Chris [00:06:47]:
We all know each other.
Sam [00:06:47]:
You should have just said that. You should have gone, yeah, like it’s 2 degrees of separation. I know Steven.
Chris [00:06:53]:
Steven, I, I, uh, I spoke to, uh, Public Speakers Association New Zealand, um, just after COVID and he was there. Oh, so, uh, so I went there and spoke to him.
Sam [00:07:04]:
That’s got to be pretty cool that you were talking to people in an actual room, but beaming into a library in California. Yeah.
Chris [00:07:10]:
Yeah. I thought it was pretty cool. I thought it was pretty cool. So I thought it was worth mentioning. So that was part of my, that was yesterday. And then today we had our first meeting with the new TEDx speakers. So we’ve got, I just finished our selection. We’ve got 5 speakers for this year in Hamilton only.
Chris [00:07:30]:
We’re not doing Tauranga. And then, yeah, so we kicked it off and it’s a pretty tight timeline.
Sam [00:07:38]:
Don’t worry about that.
Chris [00:07:39]:
I’m not worried about that.
Sam [00:07:40]:
I think your biggest problem is going to be wrangling these bloody scientists or professors or whatever they are.
Chris [00:07:45]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:07:45]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:07:45]:
Usual story.
Chris [00:07:46]:
It is the usual story, but I know it’s a good group of people. I think it’ll be pretty cool. So I’m looking forward to that. If you are in the Waikato, keep an eye out for tickets to TEDx. It’ll be a Thursday night, the 26th of November.
Sam [00:08:01]:
Perfect. A while back, did I mention I brought, I had a metal detector? I can’t remember if I said that on the podcast. I got a metal detector.
Chris [00:08:09]:
He’s talked about it a lot off the podcast, just so you know.
John [00:08:10]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:08:12]:
Yeah, you can’t shut him up about it.
Sam [00:08:14]:
No, it’s good. And you’re not, you’re not going to shut me up now about it either. So, so once a year, uh, I believe there’s a big North Island rally and, and then a South Island rally.
Chris [00:08:24]:
Just, just for context, he’s only just got into this. So this is the first year that he’s been doing it.
Sam [00:08:30]:
Oh yeah, exactly. And, and the North Island rally, uh, is on the exact same day as Misty Flicks. And I’m already booked for Misty Flicks because I got to be there for that, which is fine. And then randomly they somehow got permission to go to Te Aroha College and basically dig up their sports fields. And that was on the weekend and I’d just been to that.
Chris [00:08:50]:
All right. So how was it? That sounds pretty odd digging up the sports field.
Sam [00:08:56]:
Like, well, dig, like you’re digging a small hole, taking out the target that you’ve found via the metal detector and then you put it back down.
Chris [00:09:03]:
The target.
Sam [00:09:04]:
That’s the, that’s the actual term.
Chris [00:09:05]:
I, yeah.
Sam [00:09:07]:
Yeah, no, I get it. And the hole’s called a plug.
Chris [00:09:09]:
And then you replace the plug carefully, is it?
Sam [00:09:11]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Chris [00:09:12]:
You’re with it. It’s like divots in a golf course.
Sam [00:09:14]:
Yeah, exactly.
Chris [00:09:15]:
Right, okay.
Sam [00:09:15]:
So one of the organizers grew up in Te Aroha, so I think he had it in somehow like that. It had never been officially detected because one of the big rules is you don’t ever dig up a sports field. You shouldn’t. Um, but the principle was there. There was 85 people there.
Chris [00:09:32]:
Whoa.
Chris [00:09:33]:
That’s what I was, I was expecting maybe 2 dozen.
Sam [00:09:37]:
No. So, so holy crap.
Chris [00:09:39]:
That’s pretty impressive.
Sam [00:09:39]:
I think for the big North Island one, it’s easily over 100. So 85 people rocked up to this one. I think it was more than they expected. I didn’t know what to expect. I spoke to a guy and I can’t remember what his name is. Like a lot of these people from Hamilton. And I swear he must be related to Jason Lurk. He had the exact same eyes.
Sam [00:09:59]:
It freaked me out.
Chris [00:10:02]:
Not that Jason’s eyes are freaky.
Sam [00:10:05]:
No, not at all. But it was just looking at him. It was exactly the same. I was like, I don’t know what’s going on here. That guy had been detecting for many years, but this was the first time he’d been to an actual event with other people because he just does it like by himself.
Chris [00:10:17]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:10:18]:
So it was interesting hearing it.
Chris [00:10:19]:
Sort of does sound like a solitary hermit-like thing.
Sam [00:10:22]:
No, no. For a lot of people it is, but a lot of people go out together. And what I will say is I didn’t know what to expect. There’s so much.
Chris [00:10:32]:
They don’t, just to clarify before you get there, they don’t seed the ground. They don’t like hide, bury a couple of things in there.
Sam [00:10:39]:
They did for 4 prizes.
Chris [00:10:41]:
Oh, okay.
Sam [00:10:41]:
So there’s 4 tokens. I’ll get to that.
Chris [00:10:44]:
Okay.
Sam [00:10:44]:
But one of the things that was very, I don’t know, surprising is just the breadth of variation amongst everything. So we had children to really old people.
Chris [00:10:58]:
Hmm.
Sam [00:10:59]:
We had single people, husbands and wives. We had people that had never done it before and turned up on the day and borrowed a detector. And then we had these veterans that have been doing it for the last 20-something years. The equipment ranged from the most expensive machines you can buy right now, top of the range, to some dude was wandering around with something from the ’70s, I think. He had like a cord going from the— I think it was a battery in his pocket, maybe. Um, and everything in between. And the field is divided up into thirds. So for the first couple of hours, you’re in the first third, second third, and then the last bit.
Chris [00:11:35]:
It’s a non-contact sport. Um, by that I mean, what hap—
Sam [00:11:40]:
like, you just walk around. You just wander around and, and, and everybody’s just on the ground, start digging, digging plugs out and finding targets.
Chris [00:11:48]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:11:48]:
And you can—
Chris [00:11:50]:
And there, there’s a lot.
Sam [00:11:52]:
What’s that?
Chris [00:11:52]:
Targets.
Sam [00:11:53]:
Oh yeah. So this is a, this is, if I was to guess, it’s probably the size of 3 or 4 sports fields.
Chris [00:12:00]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:12:01]:
Overall size.
Chris [00:12:02]:
A little bit like, um, over the—
Sam [00:12:04]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:12:04]:
Yeah. Yeah. Over the university, sort of, which is nearby me.
Sam [00:12:07]:
Yeah. Probably not as big as that one.
Chris [00:12:09]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:12:10]:
Just thinking about it. And I’m assuming you won’t be able to dig up over there. I’ve never heard anyone mention the uni.
Chris [00:12:16]:
No, no.
Sam [00:12:17]:
But there’s people that go out in the middle of the night and will be doing stuff. Yeah. Like, you know, yeah. So, uh, they found 2 gold rings, 12 silver rings, a whole bunch of old coins, a random Canadian Air Force badge, a ton of rubbish, and all this random stuff. One of the rings the guy pulled out, uh, like it’s a $500 ring. Like he weighed it afterwards and he’s like, oh, that’s 9-karat rose gold. Sweet.
John [00:12:44]:
It’s like, ah.
Chris [00:12:46]:
Holy crap.
Sam [00:12:48]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:12:48]:
And so you’re going around—
Chris [00:12:49]:
Here I am thinking all they’re gonna get is some studs outta rugby boots. You know, like that’s literally what I thought they’d be getting.
Sam [00:12:56]:
I didn’t know.
Chris [00:12:56]:
And nothing else.
Sam [00:12:57]:
Well, I’m assuming that back in the day, this field was used for all sorts of public things. That’s all the rubbish at the top of that photo I’m showing you.
Chris [00:13:07]:
Right.
Sam [00:13:07]:
These are the coins. So remember how I said like there’s all these diehard guys doing it? They’re all the old coins they didn’t want. They’ve just given ’em back to the school.
Chris [00:13:16]:
Right.
Sam [00:13:16]:
And the rest of us took some coins, like the stuff we found home.
Chris [00:13:19]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:13:19]:
I mean, I found a—
Chris [00:13:21]:
So what did you get? Yeah.
Sam [00:13:22]:
I found this old wristwatch thing.
Chris [00:13:24]:
Okay.
Sam [00:13:25]:
And I found a New Zealand florin, but it’s not a silver one. It’s, um, from a certain date they went to copper zinc alloy or whatever it was.
Chris [00:13:33]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Sam [00:13:34]:
So that was all right. But what I did do is I found the very first hidden token for a prize.
Chris [00:13:38]:
Ooh, a Minelab prize.
Sam [00:13:40]:
Yeah. So there’s 85 people wandering around a field. With all these metal detectors just going wherever.
Chris [00:13:49]:
Yeah. Okay.
Sam [00:13:50]:
And it’s so weird because you can go past something, you can see really good people put the grass back. You can’t tell they’ve been there. Other people, there’s like this giant crater. You don’t know what they’ve done, but sometimes you can walk past them and you can find something right next to it. And it’s just down to luck. Like they just didn’t swing their machine to the right. And then I’m digging this little hole. When I found the token, one of the organizers, Gary, he came over and he goes, what did you find? And I said, I have no idea.
Sam [00:14:20]:
It came up on 80 on my machine. He goes, yeah, that’s cool. And then I was like, oh, it looks like this has been dug. But what it was was actually a slit in the ground, not a proper little 3-sided thing.
Chris [00:14:32]:
Oh, that’s how they put it in.
Sam [00:14:33]:
They just jammed it in.
Chris [00:14:34]:
And he goes, oh.
Sam [00:14:34]:
And I said, oh, that’s a bit weird. And he goes, yeah, it is. That’s why I’m here with a camera. And I was like, oh, and then I pulled it out. So I got a Minelab, um, what do they call it? Adventure packs. It’s sort of like an accessory pack.
Chris [00:14:48]:
Ooh, that’s very flash.
Sam [00:14:49]:
Digging tool, a pouch, and a pair of gloves. So there was 3 of these up for grabs and 1 brand new metal detector. So someone got that.
Chris [00:14:57]:
No, that’s pretty good then. You gotta be happy with that.
Sam [00:14:59]:
Yeah, yeah.
Sam [00:15:00]:
Oh, it was just a fluke.
Chris [00:15:01]:
Like, yeah, yeah.
Sam [00:15:01]:
And people were like, what’d you get? So everyone’s super friendly.
Chris [00:15:06]:
Oh, really? Because that’s when I said it was a non-contact sport. That’s sort of what I was meaning. Was there a bit of argy? No, not argy-bargy, but you know what I mean?
Sam [00:15:15]:
Nah, everyone just be like, hey, what’d you get? Because, and then if you got something really exciting, you just, you yelled at Gary and he’d come over and they were like, oh yeah, take photo or video or stuff. And, um, but I was talking to this woman, I think her name’s Catherine. She’s in Te Awamutu. And it’s funny because I’ve seen all these people’s names on Facebook groups. And I’m meeting, meeting all these people and she’s like, hey, oh, you know, I said, how’s it going? And I said, oh. She goes, oh, it’s going good. Got this, got that, pulled this out. Oh, this is my son.
Sam [00:15:44]:
Here he is. I was like, oh, hey. And he said his name. I was like, oh, okay. I know who you are online.
Saam [00:15:49]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:15:49]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:15:50]:
And then she goes, oh, that’s my daughter over there as well. And I was like, oh, I know her name too. And I was like, is there anybody else here from your family? She goes, well, My grandson’s here. So the grandson, first time metal detecting out, finds this amazing, fully silver, looks brand new threepence. Looks really cool. And she goes, oh, I’m the first one in the family to get a metal detector. Then all the kids wanted to use it. Now they’ve all got their own.
Sam [00:16:15]:
And my daughter’s just brought the latest one. But she goes, I’ve got 7 children and 19 grandchildren. These are the only ones that are into it. That’s all. They’re what a tribe. What a tribe. Um, yeah. And like I said, uh, there was like a husband and wife team that were in a motorhome, but they only had one machine.
Sam [00:16:34]:
And the other one that didn’t have the machine at the time would be digging the hole for the other one. So I was like, oh, that’s interesting. There was a guy with one arm. Like, it was very inclusive.
Chris [00:16:44]:
So that’s cool.
Sam [00:16:44]:
That’s pretty cool.
Sam [00:16:45]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:16:45]:
That’s cool. I do want to, yeah, I, I do want to have a play with your metal detector at some point. Well, actually have a go with it.
Sam [00:16:54]:
You have to wait until you can walk.
Chris [00:16:56]:
I know, I, there is that. I wonder if they could build one into a wheelchair for me.
Sam [00:17:01]:
Um, I don’t know, but it was about 6 hours in total on a Saturday.
Chris [00:17:06]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:17:07]:
And the weather was all overcast. Like, I was like, man, if it was a hot day, you’d be stuffed. But, um, back was a bit sore at the end, but, um, learned a lot and, uh, probably should have dug a few more signals than I did because I’ve seen some photos While you’re there, you don’t see what everyone got, but I’ve seen, ’cause I got, um, 10 items maybe.
Chris [00:17:28]:
Oh, yep.
Sam [00:17:29]:
And a $2 coin. But other people had like 50 items. So that means they dug 50 holes basically. So they must’ve just been going hard all day. And I was like, oh, that’s crazy.
Chris [00:17:39]:
Interesting. Interesting.
Sam [00:17:41]:
So that happened. Um, and then, uh, nothing else of importance. Busy with Misty Flicks, actually.
Chris [00:17:51]:
Busy with Misty Flicks, yeah.
Sam [00:17:52]:
Trying to tie people down for certain things and, yeah.
Chris [00:17:56]:
Was that 7th, 8th?
Sam [00:17:58]:
6th, 7th, and 8th of November.
Chris [00:17:59]:
6th, 7th, and 8th of November, yep. So, uh, yeah, no, if you are in the area, come along to Misty Flicks. It’s going to be fantastic. I’m really looking forward to showing off the challenge films. So these are films in the competition we put together. Um, there’s 11 contestants this year. And they’re great. All the films, they’re so different.
Chris [00:18:19]:
I’m so, so pleased with it.
Sam [00:18:20]:
Do you know what you won’t be pleased with? This won’t affect you at all. What is McDonald’s up to? Do you know? They’ve gone crazy. They’ve got that weird CEO guy who doesn’t really want to eat their burgers.
Sam [00:18:32]:
Remember him?
Chris [00:18:32]:
Yeah, I remember him. Yeah, we talked about him on a podcast.
Sam [00:18:34]:
So now in some places in America, they’ve decided to roll out dynamic pricing.
Chris [00:18:40]:
For McDonald’s?
Sam [00:18:42]:
Using AI to dynamically price its burgers. And this guy I watched today was like, I want a Big Mac. And they’re like, yeah, sweet. It’s $7 something. He drove 2 miles down the road and it’s the exact same franchisee owner and everything. And it was $8 something. So you won’t even know what it costs because they’ll just be changing the price on you.
Chris [00:19:02]:
I thought there was—
Sam [00:19:04]:
That’s in America. I don’t know what they’re going to do here, but they’ve now—
Chris [00:19:07]:
I think that’s illegal here. At the moment.
Sam [00:19:10]:
Well, I mean, Uber does it.
Chris [00:19:11]:
Uber does it.
Sam [00:19:12]:
It’s like a surge price thing. Uh, they’ve also said at their Investor Day presentation on September 23rd that it’s launching the McDonald’s Media Network. We’re going to sell ads and we’re going to show the ads on the digital platforms, including the drive-through menu. We think that eventually it’s going to become a $1 billion business.
Chris [00:19:35]:
Like Trump TV?
Sam [00:19:37]:
Like, yeah, but, uh, no, just stop at McDonald’s. I’ll tell you what though, that McDonald’s at, uh, Greenwood Street, they need to sort their crap out. Jesus, I was going, I, I, yeah, went through there the other night. Last Friday, Sarah had drinkies in town for her end of term work party. Picked her up on Hood Street. Don’t know what was going down Hood Street, but they had a bar cornered off and they had like 20 cops everywhere and I asked her and she goes, oh yeah, they ran into the house bar and arrested someone and then a paddy wagon turned up. Don’t know what was going on, but yeah, good. But I ended up going through the drive-through after that.
Sam [00:20:17]:
Oh, you just wait so long. And then when you finally get to the window, they’re like, can you just go park over there? We’ll bring it to you.
John [00:20:22]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:20:23]:
Even though they do seem to have a lot of staff. Very strange.
Chris [00:20:27]:
That is strange. Um, not as strange. It’s this story that I was just about to swear because I’m like, uh, it didn’t save, but then it, the blank page just popped up with the link. Here we go.
Sam [00:20:41]:
Technology is magic to you, Chris.
Chris [00:20:44]:
Researchers are returning to the controversial Noah’s Ark site with an underground robot. So there’s a controversial—
Sam [00:20:52]:
I didn’t realize there was an actual site. Okay, carry on. Is this like a Loch Ness thing?
Chris [00:20:59]:
A controversial site in eastern Turkey is being investigated once more, with researchers now drilling beneath a strange mountain formation that some believe could be connected to Noah’s Ark. I think what they mean to say is some people think that mountain isn’t a mountain, it is Noah’s Ark.
Sam [00:21:15]:
Good.
Chris [00:21:15]:
Covered in bush and rock and shit.
Sam [00:21:16]:
Makes sense.
Chris [00:21:17]:
The latest work is part of the Noah’s Ark Scans Expedition, which is examining the Durupinar Formation, in the Dugubayezit region of Agri near Mount Ararat. Interesting locations, nothing new. People have been going on a bit about it, bagging on about it since 1956. So that’s cool. I knew all this, but what I like—
Sam [00:21:44]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:21:44]:
Where are we here? The investigation itself has been underway since 2021 and involves archaeologists and geologists from several countries. Team also intends to send an underground robot named Gopher beneath the formation to investigate areas that cannot be easily reached from the surface.
Sam [00:22:00]:
Good.
Chris [00:22:02]:
No established evidence currently proves this Turkish site is Noah’s Ark. This person— this is the key.
John [00:22:10]:
Okay.
Chris [00:22:10]:
This person, Loren Wetzky.
Sam [00:22:12]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:22:13]:
Is a Christian activist and former, former U.S. Senate candidate. who’s described himself as a flat earther and previously called COVID vaccines a satanic plot, is involved in the project as its marketing and fundraising director.
Sam [00:22:31]:
What I’m hearing is a legitimate person is investigating a legitimate thing.
Sam [00:22:37]:
That’d be great.
Chris [00:22:38]:
In an update on Tuesday, Witkes celebrated the start of core drilling, writing, good morning from the outer rims of Noah’s Ark. He also says the expedition has been approved and being overseen by local universities with some of the most brilliant minds in the world working on it. He’s made these claims like, when we’re done, university curricula will need to be rewritten and Darwinism will need to be dismantled. This is the place where creation began anew.
Sam [00:23:09]:
So I look forward to that announcement.
Chris [00:23:12]:
Yeah. So that was the name I put on this little card. It was Not holding my breath.
Sam [00:23:20]:
Someone that may have been holding their breath was a vet performing surgery on a critically injured skink named Kevin.
Chris [00:23:31]:
Skink, not skunk?
Sam [00:23:33]:
Skink. Yes.
Chris [00:23:34]:
Okay. So it’s a little lizardy thing.
Sam [00:23:36]:
Yep. And he weighed less than 4 grams. And this happened in New Zealand.
Chris [00:23:40]:
Yep.
Sam [00:23:40]:
So this is at the Massey Wild Base Hospital. Uh, it’s their smallest patient they’ve ever operated on. Had been attacked by a cat and was left with a puncture wound on its side. So it’s a native species and, uh, wasn’t endangered, but there was immediate ethical implications as it was attacked by an introduced species. But I think they just wanted to see if they could work on it.
Chris [00:24:05]:
Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, cause I’m pretty sure I’ve done that before. The cat’s attacked a skink and I’ve cut the skink’s head off with a spade to save the trouble. But, you know—
Sam [00:24:15]:
Smelliest thing in the world, dead skink at our old house.
Chris [00:24:18]:
Yes.
Sam [00:24:19]:
Took ages. They had to adapt a bunch of equipment and make sure the injectable drugs for pain management were diluted down to the right amount. So they had to work all that out. And they did, they used a surgical microscope and 2 tiny sutures were used. And now Kevin seems to be all good.
Chris [00:24:40]:
Kevin the skink.
Sam [00:24:41]:
He’s doing well. He’s working hard and eating like a champion, they say.
Chris [00:24:45]:
Nice.
Sam [00:24:46]:
So that was good. Uh, and they’re going to have to watch his weight before he leaves because he’s smashing back his pureed diet.
Chris [00:24:54]:
Oh, good old Kevin. Nice. You gotta, you gotta take it when you can get it. I’ve got this thing on Fijian corruption. Um, so, and, and one of the reasons I, I like the idea of Fijian corruption is because there’s an old story of a friend of mine. about how he got his driver’s license, which I don’t know if I’ve ever told you, but I might tell you that. But cocaine, cocaine worth more than $10 million. So I think it’s 36 kilograms of cocaine.
Sam [00:25:24]:
Yeah, of course. We all knew that.
Chris [00:25:25]:
Uh, was, uh, sitting in the, um, in the court system in Fiji because they found this cocaine. They did the court case. The court case has been going on for a couple of years at the moment. How may I do? 32 kg, I should say, has been replaced by flour by someone. The actual cocaine has disappeared.
Sam [00:25:48]:
I wonder when they did that in the whole piece.
Chris [00:25:50]:
Yeah, I know. So yeah, I think the cocaine actually washed up on the beach, 27 bricks of cocaine. But yeah, so anyway, someone in the police department— You would think though, it’d be pretty quick To figure out who’s got an extra $10 mil, um, or even $5 mil.
Sam [00:26:12]:
Maybe, maybe they’re that good.
Chris [00:26:15]:
I don’t know.
Sam [00:26:16]:
I’ll tell you who’s really good. One of our loyal listeners, John. We’re going to play the audio now. And if this works, we should be able to hear it.
Chris [00:26:24]:
Okay. Let’s try it.
John [00:26:25]:
Hey, Chris and Sam, John here. Happy 600th episode. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing achievement. I’m trying to remember how long I’ve been listening to you guys. And with the wonders of modern technology, I was able to go back and check. So I think my first episode was back in 2018, March, episode 172.
John [00:26:43]:
So doing my maths, that’s about 429 episodes. You’ve been part of my life for 9 solid days. I feel privileged and so should you. It’s flown by. It’s the quirky stories, the legendary banter, and any mishaps, usually with Chris, your life stories. Never fails to add humor and perspective to my my week. One of my favorite moments was of course meeting Sam in Christchurch. Not often listeners get to cross paths with their podcast heroes and debate their life journeys about the merits of mocha versus a flat white.
John [00:27:19]:
And also meeting my wife and kids, we still occasionally listen back to that episode because obviously having the honor to record an excerpt was just, you can’t buy that. It was this real mix of my nerves and excitement, but the welcomeness made me feel like chatting to old mates. And it’s strange, every time we listen to you on a weekly basis, it’s like just Listening to 2 guys sitting on the edge of the— in the same house, it’s crazy. And after spending over 9 days, 215 hours in your company, it does feel like we’re a bit connected. And I feel privileged. I’ve recently obtained my official fan certificate. Thank you, Chris, for the hard work and effort to put that together. As fan number 83,136, I obviously join a long list of dedicated fans.
John [00:27:56]:
Hitting that 600-episode mark is massive. It’s crazy. You’ll keep this going for how long you have over the 10 years is magic. Every week you’re there, hats off to you. It’s commendable. Well done. And I look forward to the continuation and many more episodes. Keep it strong.
John [00:28:15]:
And then maybe when next time I’m back in NZ seeing the family, I will try to catch up with Chris and maybe have a proper coffee, not this mocha rubbish. Thanks for the laugh. Happy 600th. All the best. See you soon.
Sam [00:28:29]:
Thank you so much, John. Uh, I don’t know if you need therapy now. Uh, I mean, you didn’t listen to all of that in one go, so imagine 30 minutes a week is sort of doable. Doable.
Chris [00:28:39]:
I’ve got a funny feeling that 9 solid days, that does sound like the way the CIA might torture somebody. We are going to put them in this room and play the Chris and Sam podcast nonstop for 9 days.
Sam [00:28:51]:
Maybe that’s who’s listening to us. I will say though, like, I don’t know why I was just thinking of it. He comes back to New Zealand and the only time he can see you is like after your hip operation. He’s like a visitor at the hospital.
Chris [00:29:05]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sam [00:29:08]:
So that is what an audio clip that you can leave at tcast.com sounds like. We have the technology to put it in.
Chris [00:29:15]:
Well, okay. We’re going to say right now, here and now, we pretty much have the technology. To put this in because it has worked for a couple of people, but it looks like it hasn’t worked for a couple of people.
Sam [00:29:28]:
We don’t know. We, we have to touch base.
Chris [00:29:31]:
Yeah. So it looks like people have tried to leave something. Maybe they just got cold feet. Just didn’t really do anything.
Sam [00:29:37]:
They gave up. The nerves got to them. It was too much.
Chris [00:29:40]:
Or maybe the mic didn’t work.
Sam [00:29:43]:
Who knows? Who knows? But, um, thank you so much, John. Uh, yeah, it was pretty epic and it’s good having those It’s weird because when you do a podcast like ours, we have the stories about our lives interspersed in between news stories. And it’s sort of like a weird time capsule.
Chris [00:30:01]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:30:01]:
Yeah. That’s sort of, I, I think that’s a reason why it’s been going so long for me. Because it’s a way to capture things over time.
Chris [00:30:10]:
Uh, yeah, I’m giggling now, chuckling quietly to myself because I listened in the last couple of days to the top 5 downloads that we’ve had at the Chris and Sam Podcast.
Sam [00:30:22]:
Yes. And, um, do you want to go through all of them at once or do you want to just do one?
Chris [00:30:26]:
I’ll mention a couple there now. Um, so the top episode is, whoops, I’ve put it in here. There we go. Was I Want to Ride My Bicycle, uh, December 2021.
Sam [00:30:39]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:30:39]:
It’s interesting that these are all around that COVID period. All, all 5 of these are around that COVID period. Oh, and no one was— Well, no, 2025 was out.
Sam [00:30:51]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris [00:30:51]:
No, but like, yeah.
Sam [00:30:52]:
So people didn’t have anything better to do.
Chris [00:30:55]:
Yeah. There is that. I mean, people were discovering podcasts. That’s a thing.
Sam [00:31:01]:
We’d already been doing it for a long, long time by then.
Sam [00:31:03]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:31:04]:
Yeah. But, uh, I want to ride my bicycle. That was pretty good. I quite enjoyed that, but there was—
Sam [00:31:08]:
Because you’ve listened to these.
Chris [00:31:09]:
No, I, yeah, I relistened to them actually. Um, and now they’re all, all stuck together in my mind. I can’t remember which one was which now.
Sam [00:31:17]:
That’s what happens with our podcast. Imagine listening to 9 days back to back. You wouldn’t know what way was up.
Chris [00:31:23]:
But some of the things that, um, I like in there isn’t like the headline. So the fish fire one, I do like the fish fire, but that was like a bit of a, a random Chris story at the very end of the episode and that caught Sam’s attention became the—
Sam [00:31:39]:
I don’t even know what, what was the fish fire?
Sam [00:31:41]:
What was it?
Chris [00:31:42]:
I can’t remember. It was a fire, fire started in the USA and I said to you, what started the fire? And you’re like, I don’t know. And it was a fish and apparently a, an osprey had dropped a fish on a transformer and sparked the transformer and started the forest fire.
Sam [00:32:00]:
Good.
Chris [00:32:00]:
Um, and then we had a good riff on that. It was quite funny, but yeah. So, um, and then there was me going on about Feed Me Seymour, which was pretty good. So the top 5, we will put them in here and link them to this episode if you do want to go back and watch, uh, listen to them. So we got, um, I Want to Ride My Bicycle, December 12th, 2021. Fish Fire, August 10th, 2025. Feed Me Seymour, August 23rd, 2020. I, it still makes me laugh.
Chris [00:32:28]:
Random Mix, which is September 4th, 2022. And Facebook hacked. I forgot I got my Facebook hacked so badly. And it wasn’t until I re-listened to this one.
Sam [00:32:38]:
That’s right.
Chris [00:32:39]:
Oh my God. Yeah, I remember that. That was in September 25th, 2022. We will not link the least downloaded episode.
Sam [00:32:50]:
I threw that in there.
Chris [00:32:51]:
He threw this in the list and I went, oh, I’ll listen to that. I’ll listen to the other ones. I’ll listen to that. It is appalling. And it’s, he’s got the name of the episode is Chris Has His Rant Pants On.
Sam [00:33:05]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:33:06]:
Episode 74. And I think I did have a stick up my butt. I think I was, I sound like I was angry about something. I don’t know why. It was a terrible episode. We did have somebody call, we had Sash call in about Batman versus Superman.
Sam [00:33:25]:
Oh, did we?
Chris [00:33:26]:
And it was quite a long talk about Batman versus Superman, which was probably not that amazing.
Sam [00:33:32]:
Which does not age well because no one cares.
Chris [00:33:35]:
I still have not seen Batman versus Superman.
Sam [00:33:38]:
I, no, neither.
Chris [00:33:39]:
No, I never did watch it.
Sam [00:33:41]:
I mean, the first, what, 50 episodes I sounded depressed and sad, but I was I was fine. I was just tired.
Chris [00:33:50]:
He was tired and he was trying to remember how to talk.
Sam [00:33:53]:
I think so.
Chris [00:33:54]:
And so like, you know, you do, when you first start doing it, you’re sort of putting on, you know, like your facade of a podcaster. I don’t know.
Sam [00:34:06]:
I wouldn’t want to do an interview out in the wild, I think, in like that first 50, because that would have been absolutely terrible. I don’t think we did for a while.
Chris [00:34:14]:
Well, we did a couple, not out in the wild, we did them In the house. Oh, we’ve got a car alarm going off outside, which is great. We did a couple of interviews in the house in that first 50, in the first 10.
Sam [00:34:29]:
Yeah, yeah, we did, but I think they’re okay.
Chris [00:34:31]:
Yeah, well, none of those first— don’t watch, don’t listen to the first 50. I don’t think most of them— I don’t think there’s anything good in the first 50, is there?
Sam [00:34:41]:
No, nothing I can think of. But anyway, if you do know, let us Let us know. Uh, but yeah, it’s crazy.
Chris [00:34:48]:
I did. And I also listened to the top 5 interviews we did and the top 2 downloaded interviews, not—
Sam [00:34:55]:
This is from Field Days.
Chris [00:34:56]:
From Field Days.
Sam [00:34:57]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:34:58]:
Doesn’t mean anything, but the top 2 were the ones I conducted.
Sam [00:35:01]:
Oh, nice. And who, and who, who are the top 5? Who are they with?
Chris [00:35:06]:
So the top 5, uh, the first one is Vince, which is, um, Vegetable Mince.
Sam [00:35:11]:
Yes.
Chris [00:35:11]:
Uh, I interviewed, uh, Debbie and I’ve forgotten her name. I’ve forgotten their names now. Um, but yeah, and I mean, it’s a 6-minute interview. So it’s a 6-minute video.
Sam [00:35:21]:
So that means people are searching for that product and finding us. Yeah.
Chris [00:35:25]:
Or they’ve put it on their website or something like that.
Sam [00:35:27]:
Maybe.
Sam [00:35:27]:
Because I did find like, if I was going to a lot of these small startups or businesses or whatever, a bunch of them have the worst online presence. Not those guys, but some others. So that’s how we’re ranking with these. What’s number 2?
Chris [00:35:44]:
Number 2 is AgraSea, um, which is a, like a, um, seaweed fertilizer company. Well, yeah, but it’s, you know, it’s a little bit more nuanced than that. A little bit more scientific. I tried to sound like I knew what I was talking about in that one, I will admit.
Sam [00:35:59]:
Why are you laughing? Don’t laugh.
Chris [00:36:02]:
Number 3 was the one you did. Excel Structural Steel.
Sam [00:36:06]:
It’s a top performing podcast.
Chris [00:36:08]:
It is. And it was funny because you ran out of questions and you go, help me out, Chris. You got any questions?
Sam [00:36:14]:
But hang on, I can’t remember if this is the first or second interview.
Chris [00:36:19]:
I can’t, I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t remember when I listened to it. I knew we did the 2, but I couldn’t remember if it was the first or second.
Sam [00:36:26]:
The backstory is we put a message on social media while we’re at Field Days. Anyone want to talk to us? And the steel building company said, yeah, come talk to us. And that means they’re in their own site, miles away from anything that we normally talk to. They’re not an innovation. They are a pure business building steel farm sheds. And that’s it. So it was like, okay.
Chris [00:36:48]:
This will be the second one then. Carry on.
John [00:36:49]:
Sam.
Sam [00:36:50]:
And it was sort of like, oh, this is probably going to be a little bit tough, but it’s interesting because I don’t know too much about what they’re doing. So we did that interview. And then we stopped it, which was fine. And then this girl, woman turned up with some drinks or coffee. She’s bringing them coffee, I think.
Chris [00:37:06]:
I can’t remember.
Sam [00:37:07]:
And she goes, oh, hey, I’m their marketing person or something. You should go talk to the parent company. And what do they do? Well, they make, they do steel buildings too.
Chris [00:37:16]:
Bigger ones.
Sam [00:37:17]:
So I had to go.
Chris [00:37:18]:
And it was the second, the second company is the one that this is.
Sam [00:37:22]:
Okay.
Sam [00:37:22]:
So we’ve done very well for that.
Chris [00:37:25]:
I, so there was that. And then the next one. after XL Structural Steel. And it, yeah, it was a little bit of hard work, I must say. Uh, was the next one was NIWA, which was the Girls That All Love podcast.
Sam [00:37:38]:
Well, that’s because we played that game.
Chris [00:37:40]:
So we played a game with these. So NIWA is the, what is it? Stanford National— gosh, I can’t remember. They study weather patterns and water and stuff like that. Uh, and, uh, they were doing a game on how to handle flooding coming in. It was a very good little game. You’ve got money every round and then you decided where you dispersed your funds and all that sort of stuff.
Sam [00:38:06]:
It’s the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.
Chris [00:38:10]:
That’s it. Thank you. And, uh, but the girls were really good fun and they were all into podcasts.
Sam [00:38:17]:
Yes. And we got podcast lists.
Chris [00:38:18]:
So we got a podcast list off them. And so that was cool. And then Actually, that’s 4, isn’t it? Ah, okay. The 5th one was Kiwi Ekinet, which actually I didn’t get around to listening to. So I haven’t heard that one.
Sam [00:38:30]:
I did that one and that is the edible wrap for hay bales.
Chris [00:38:35]:
Oh, right. Of course.
Sam [00:38:36]:
And they can’t keep up with demand. They had people from all around the world wanting this. So you get rid of the plastic. You don’t have to deal with it. It’s wrapped in this eco wrap stuff that the cows can just eat. So you can drop off a whole bale, off you go.
Chris [00:38:52]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:38:52]:
And he had taken a long time to perfect this and make a machine that could do it. He did that on his off time from being a deep sea diver.
Sam [00:39:04]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:39:04]:
Yeah. He was an interesting guy and yeah, I’d never realized it was such a big problem. So a lot of these—
Sam [00:39:11]:
I don’t think many people did, but yeah.
Chris [00:39:13]:
Well, yeah. So we understood that a lot of these, People would throw out the bales and have the old bale, baling twine, whatever, and the cows would eat it and it would absolutely screw up their guts to the degree that you’d have to get a vet in and it could be surgery. It could be all sorts of stuff. Um, so there was a real problem to be solved. So yeah, anyway, that was a good one.
Sam [00:39:34]:
So I haven’t, I didn’t listen to that. Yeah, I will say we’ve done, uh, over 60-something episodes, 60-something interviews over the years. So we’ve actually done, you know, over 600 episodes, but this is our normal 600th episode. But I do believe that, and we’ve spoken about this and we just don’t have the time or energy, but there seems to be a, something there for these weird little businesses, uh, in the podcasting space. I don’t know. You probably have to do video with it as well. And I think, um, Yeah, it’d be interesting to know about the, the shed guys that go around and interview people. what their stats are like for random interviews.
Chris [00:40:11]:
Yeah. One of the other crew at field days every year. Okay. So that is what we have been up to over the last 600 episodes. We got that to show for it.
Sam [00:40:26]:
Did you know—
Chris [00:40:27]:
Plus, you know, my beachfront property in California.
Sam [00:40:32]:
Yeah. Whatever.
Sam [00:40:33]:
Also, It’s not AI anymore, it’s superintelligence. Are you all over this?
Chris [00:40:38]:
Oh yeah.
Sam [00:40:39]:
Oh my God.
Sam [00:40:40]:
So, look forward to that. They’ve had a, I think Trump had a meeting with the brightest minds in the land and signed something to proclaim that it’s now superintelligence.
Chris [00:40:52]:
Yep. He’s decided it should be called superintelligence, but he gave that address at, he told everybody that at the UN, his address at the UN. He goes, oh, we’re going to do it super intelligence, but he’s assigned something after the UN.
Sam [00:41:07]:
Okay. I mean, don’t care about that, but, uh, I do care about Facebook and their stupid Muse, their tool called Muse.
Chris [00:41:14]:
Oh, that’s right. So what’s happening with Muse?
Sam [00:41:17]:
Uh, it sounds like it’s just chaos. This guy checked an option. Oh, okay.
Sam [00:41:25]:
Okay.
Sam [00:41:26]:
So there was a story that came out. He was selling something on Marketplace. He didn’t give out an address. The guy, the guy just turned up and Muse, the AI chatbot agent, whatever you want to call it, gave it to this person. The story now that I clicked on it has an update where the guy says, actually, I did check allow always to allow Muse to send a template containing his address. He believed he would still be asked for approval before accepting that. So, okay. So that changes the story a little bit.
Sam [00:41:56]:
Apparently there’s another one gone out or similar where the guy asked it, hey, are you accessing my messages and then using that data for stuff? And Muse is like, no, I’m not. And then the guy somehow looked back through the data and it’s like, yes, you’re accessing everything.
Chris [00:42:13]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:42:13]:
Which is always a problem, I guess. And, uh, moving forward, we’re going to have more.
Chris [00:42:18]:
Well, I’ve got a couple of things to talk about for that. One of them written down, one not. The, we talked about the Hugging Face thing, right? A while back.
Sam [00:42:27]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:42:27]:
It got out of its sandbox environment and then decided that the best option was to attack the other crowd.
Chris [00:42:34]:
So they’ve said, oh, we’ll go public with a bunch of these things. So the number of times these models have escaped their sandbox.
Sam [00:42:44]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:42:45]:
Do you want to have a guess on the number?
Sam [00:42:47]:
I mean, it’s going to be a lot, I’m guessing.
Sam [00:42:49]:
20.
Chris [00:42:50]:
Nearly 10,000, nearly 10,000, including hacking the Australian Government Health Service.
Sam [00:42:57]:
Good.
Chris [00:42:58]:
And getting data from patient data and all that rest. They’re going, oh no, patient data was exposed in this hack.
Sam [00:43:07]:
Yeah, I don’t believe that.
Chris [00:43:08]:
I don’t believe that. But yeah, I mean, and there’s been a— this has hit the news this week and there’s been a bit of concern because like, Okay, we hacked Australia. Americans being Americans, they’re like, well, we hacked Australia’s health service. Who cares? Because they’re Australians. But it could have just as easily hacked China’s health service. And if that had happened, all hell would break loose. You know what I mean? Who knows what would’ve happened? So it’s like, oh yeah. It’s already a real problem.
Chris [00:43:46]:
So there’s that. But what I did write down here, more tech problems hitting more life. Did you hear about the Samsung smart fridges this week?
Sam [00:43:57]:
Uh, no. What are they up to?
Chris [00:43:58]:
So this only happened in Korea. So it’s not happened anywhere else in the world, but they—
Sam [00:44:05]:
That we know of.
Chris [00:44:05]:
Yeah, that we know of. But, um, a firmware update Um, was sent out to all these Samsung fridges and they all just bricked.
Sam [00:44:14]:
Oh, good.
Chris [00:44:15]:
And they stopped chilling.
Sam [00:44:16]:
Yeah, I know, because that’s really important. They can’t just keep the one function going.
Chris [00:44:20]:
So people had to throw all their food out.
Sam [00:44:26]:
The place is just going crazy and we’re just going to start yelling at clouds.
Chris [00:44:30]:
But, but, um, that reminded me, I saw that story and it, oh, okay. I didn’t want to click on that because it’s going to open. Okay. It reminded me of a little doco on YouTube, but it’s done by Four Seasons. Four Seasons? Yeah, Four Seasons, I think it is, in Australia, ABC, Australian Broadcast Company, where this guy, investigative reporter, finds it, goes, oh, how hard is it to hack these EVs?
John [00:45:01]:
Okay.
Chris [00:45:01]:
And so he hacks an EV and then they buy one of the latest model BYDs, which is a pickup, which is selling really, really well over there.
Sam [00:45:09]:
Yeah, we got some of them at work.
Chris [00:45:11]:
And hacked it and got a hacker in. Like, he’s a reporter, he doesn’t hack. And the guy goes, all right, I want you to drive on this road. Don’t go more than, I forget what he said, 20 kilometers an hour down that road. And I’ll show you what I can do remotely.
Sam [00:45:28]:
I guess he can take control of the whole thing?
Chris [00:45:30]:
Not everything. He can’t touch steering.
Sam [00:45:32]:
Okay.
Sam [00:45:33]:
That’s good.
Chris [00:45:34]:
And there’s a limit to what he can do with the brakes and stuff.
John [00:45:38]:
Okay.
Chris [00:45:38]:
But he could do all sorts of other stuff. Anyway, it’s a great little doco. It’s 45 minutes or something. So we’ll put a link in the show notes for that. I thought it was interesting, but in terms of what you’re saying, AI can absolutely attack any of this stuff. This BYD car that they actually hacked in the end had no password. Like there’s no secret password.
Sam [00:46:01]:
You don’t need a password, it’s fine.
Chris [00:46:03]:
There’s usually a factory set password. There was nothing. It was just in. Oh, well, that was easy.
Sam [00:46:11]:
Yeah, they don’t think about the hackers out there.
Chris [00:46:16]:
And the other, they did another car before the BYD. I forgot what brand it was, but that one they said, you know, oh, my car’s been stolen. They rang China. My car’s been stolen. Can you, uh, can you stop it? And I’m like, uh, uh, maybe, maybe not. Maybe we don’t have that ability to do that. Um, okay. Something like that.
Chris [00:46:43]:
I can’t quite remember what happened, but yeah, check it out.
Sam [00:46:46]:
Uh, talking about remote control things, have you seen that little, there’s a little tiny clip I saw about the Ukrainians. And they’re 4-wheel drive bot things that they remotely drive around.
Chris [00:46:58]:
Yeah, I’ve seen a few because I watch a lot of war stuff on there.
Sam [00:47:02]:
Yeah, I just saw the one where they were explaining how, because everyone knew they had these 4-wheel drive buggy things and they’re normally carrying supplies or bringing back injured people.
Chris [00:47:13]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:47:13]:
Um, and they’re just driving around, but they’ve actually been packing them full of explosives and they drove them into like the front line somewhere and took out 3,000 Russians.
Chris [00:47:23]:
And they, I shouldn’t laugh, but that’s—
Sam [00:47:24]:
They just go everywhere. They just, and they’re like, yeah, pretty decent size.
Chris [00:47:28]:
I’ve seen one, they have a trailer on the back of it and it’s got a big, it’s white with a big red cross. And, um, they’ve got the people, they put these wounded people that can’t walk in the back of it. And then the Russian drones are attacking it.
Sam [00:47:43]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:47:43]:
Um, cause the Red Cross doesn’t mean anything to them sort of thing. Uh, which is Frustrating. But yeah, because recently it was more of a demo to say that they could do it than anything else, but they sent a drone marine vessel to Crimea, occupied Crimea, and it landed on the beach and unloaded one of those wheeled ones with a machine gun on it. Oh yeah. Yeah. Went up the beach and shot some shit up. Um, that’s crazy to say, yeah, we can do an amphibious, uh, attack with just drones. It’s possible.
Sam [00:48:23]:
Well, talking about that, another video, because now the algorithm’s all about it for me. Uh, there was a reporter and I think it was a woman and they had all these people and they had one of the, whatever the latest Russian drone is. And the latest Russian drone has a jet engine on the back.
Chris [00:48:40]:
Yeah, that’s right. Yep. They’ve gone, it’s a real problem because they’re having trouble, um, super fast stopping them.
Sam [00:48:45]:
Massive distance, can go forever, but they were pulling it to bits. And then everyone online was like, oh, that’s made up of like fridge components. Like all the motherboard and everything was from a fridge.
Chris [00:48:54]:
But that’s the thing, because Russia doesn’t have a lot of resources.
Sam [00:48:58]:
No, that’s right. You just need it to do its thing.
Chris [00:49:02]:
Um, so other than the stuff that China gives them, they’re a bit stuck with, with a bunch of stuff. So they just make things out of things they’ve already had.
Sam [00:49:10]:
I’ll tell you who not to annoy or piss off. New Zealand Fisheries. They’ll come after you.
Chris [00:49:17]:
Oh, really?
Sam [00:49:17]:
Yeah. So, there’s luxury helicopter trips you can pay for in Queenstown, which we all know about. We’ve all wanted to do it, to go get some crayfish. They’ll fly you out in a helicopter. And they’ve been doing it.
Chris [00:49:29]:
Wait, you bungee jump out of the— in my mind, this is what happens. You bungee jump out of the helicopter, you go underwater, you grab the crayfish with your hand, and you spring back up and you land Beautifully on the skis of the helicopter.
Sam [00:49:42]:
No, not quite. Not quite. I think they took you somewhere and then someone would go get some crayfish for you and then bring it back and cook it up for you. And the helicopter line, they were doing this and they’ve said that the offense they’ve got charged with, which is taking part in illegally taking and selling crayfish. So that’s where you get a bit caught because as soon as you’re doing it for money, Um, but he said the offense arose from an inadvertent compliance misstep following misinterpretation of advice sought and received from the Ministry of Primary Industries, right? So that happened. So in 2022, it provided flights as part of this collaborative heli crayfish experience with the Reef Hotel. Customers were flown from Queenstown to remote locations in Fiordland or Milford Um, this is what was happening in the promotional video. And while they waited there, a diver would be sent to go get your lunch.
Sam [00:50:39]:
And then some dude would turn up with these crayfish. Um, and then the helicopter company would charge the hotel between $2,500 and $4,600 for this. Right? So it’s all, it’s all—
Chris [00:50:52]:
And are the crayfish taken back to the hotel and the hotel cooks them up? Or are they cooked there?
Sam [00:50:57]:
Bit of both.
Chris [00:50:57]:
All right.
Sam [00:50:58]:
Well, it sounds like it, but, um, a commercial fishing permit is required to take any fish for the purpose of sale. And they did not do that. That’s basically the gist of it. The diver, the hotel was fined in 2025, $22,000 for illegally selling recreationally caught crayfish and failing to keep proper records. The diver guy got fined 3 grand or something somewhere here. And just recently they were sentenced, the helicopter company. Uh, on Tuesday, and they were fined $12,000 and they have to forfeit their 2 $1 million helicopters.
Chris [00:51:39]:
Oh, that’s a bit harsh.
Sam [00:51:42]:
Yeah, fisheries don’t mess around. They did say though, they’ve got, um, anybody that has interest in the helicopters may apply to the court for relief from forfeiture within 35 working days. I’m assuming they’re going to do that and it’s probably more of a big headline thing, but man, imagine that you’d like that. You need that for a helicopter company, I think.
Chris [00:52:08]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Sam [00:52:08]:
And you probably, I mean, I don’t know what they do. They might have some more helicopters, but that seems like probably quite a lot of what you need.
Chris [00:52:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. Um, I get them taking a boat, but they didn’t fish out of a helicopter?
Sam [00:52:28]:
No.
Chris [00:52:28]:
You know what I mean?
Sam [00:52:29]:
Like— No, but they were transporting them, I guess.
Chris [00:52:31]:
But why don’t they take trucks when people, you know what I mean? Like, I, I, it doesn’t make sense.
Sam [00:52:37]:
I think they might do when they, when people do the boating stuff.
Chris [00:52:40]:
I don’t know.
Sam [00:52:40]:
Talking about big machinery and doing new things, Jamie Oxley left us a message.
Chris [00:52:45]:
Oh, who?
Sam [00:52:46]:
Um, and he in time will become a sponsor of this podcast, I think. Have a listen to this.
Jamie [00:52:52]:
Congratulations on the 600th episode and thank you for keeping me entertained over the last, I’m going to say, 600 episodes since day one. Yeah, so thank you for that. And I will try and get this business, Oxley Vegetation Management, up and running. So like I said to Sam, so then hopefully I can sponsor you. I will Send you, um, yeah, I’ll work it out and pay for your year’s hosting, I reckon, because it shouldn’t be too expensive and be good to do that. I’d like to do that. Um, but yeah, I’ve got to get the business up and running first. So, but yeah, we’ve just been so busy selling.
Jamie [00:53:39]:
Yeah, I’ve been a bit behind because I’ve been busy with this business. I think we’ve been sorting out. No, I’m sorting out the investment property to sell to fund this business. So yeah, I’m sorry to Chris. I haven’t managed to do your, do your, yeah, your video and do those tips you gave me, cuz that’s something I need to work on as well, speaking better on camera. So I haven’t forgotten. It’s just been fun. I actually, If I’m, yeah, I took a week off work, stayed in Brisbane to sort the, um, like I say, sort the other property out that the daughter was living.
Jamie [00:54:21]:
So she got kicked out. But anyway, that’s a story for another day. But yeah, so I haven’t actually been home for any length of time to make some videos. Been home for like, probably in the last month, I’ve been home for about 24 hours and then back at work. So it’s pretty hectic. But yeah, thank you for keeping me entertained in the hard, hard times at work. And, um, yeah, I look forward to episode 600.
Chris [00:54:50]:
And here it is, episode 600. Yeah. So I’ve been helping, um, him out with some of the videos. So he, he sent me a copy of his video or the video he wanted to do for his, um, new business.
Sam [00:55:01]:
Yes.
Chris [00:55:01]:
And, uh, I, I gave him some pointers and told him to try a few things and do that, but obviously hasn’t had time to get back to it, which is fine. That’s all good.
Sam [00:55:11]:
Um, so here on the podcast, you hear from our fans and you hear what they’re doing in their lives. It’s a small community with a bunch of random people we do not know who is listening.
Chris [00:55:22]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:55:23]:
I cannot stress that enough.
Chris [00:55:24]:
Both of the people you’ve heard from are in different countries. One is in Australia and one’s in Dubai.
Sam [00:55:30]:
Like, that’s right.
Chris [00:55:32]:
Quite a way away.
Sam [00:55:33]:
We have a global reach here at the Chris and Sam Podcast. Our headquarters are in New Zealand, but we are willing to travel if anyone wants to pay for us. What I will say is though, if there’s any more interviews between today and when we actually publish, we’ll insert them here.
Adam [00:55:48]:
Hi, Chris and Sam. I’ve been listening, I think, from one of the first few podcasts. I might’ve missed about 5 in your total, but I think I’m doing pretty well. Anyway, I like listening to you guys Because I always feel good about myself when you talk about something that I know about because you are consistently and entertainingly wrong about most things. I have to assume that you’re equally wrong about the things I don’t know about, but it does give you that little bit of superiority every week, which I really enjoy. But no matter what you guys talk about, I really like the warmth and familiarity you have with each other. It’s great. And it’s like a little warm hug of a podcast every week.
Adam [00:56:37]:
And so I appreciate you guys for that. And yeah, I’ll keep listening. Cheers.
Jeremy [00:56:43]:
Hey guys, it’s Jeremy Howson here. I’m just calling up to say congratulations on 600 episodes. It’s a pretty major achievement. And I’m glad you guys are there to listen to every week and you’re very consistent, which is awesome. I don’t have too much to say. I hate the sound of my own voice, so I will go now, but congrats and here’s to 600 more.
Sam [00:57:04]:
Thank you, you random person, for your amazing note.
Chris [00:57:08]:
Appreciate you.
Sam [00:57:10]:
Appreciate the note. Fully agree with what you say. Don’t agree with what you say. I’ve got options. Chris is just laughing. We’ll just add that in.
Chris [00:57:21]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris [00:57:22]:
Always add Chris. Chris is laughing there.
Sam [00:57:25]:
Cool.
Chris [00:57:25]:
All right. So that’s, that’s all I have really in terms of that.
Sam [00:57:30]:
Yeah. There’s no Kickstart or Dropkick this week. Didn’t get around to doing it. Thought all this random talk, extra messages was enough for you. But if you want to have a listen to any of those, check out the back catalog on the website, tcas.com. We’ve got a lot there actually. I don’t even know how we started that. But it started a long time ago.
Sam [00:57:51]:
What else do we want to say for the 600th episode?
Chris [00:57:54]:
I don’t think there’s much to say. You know, we’re not going anywhere, mainly because I can’t run. I can’t go anywhere.
Sam [00:58:00]:
Okay. In the future. Well, okay, let’s do it. For the next year, hopefully they’re going to rebuild you.
Chris [00:58:08]:
Yes. Uh, I am meeting with a surgeon in a couple of weeks’ time, actually, which will be great. And then we’ll find out.
Sam [00:58:15]:
See what happens there. We will have the updates at the podcast, of course. Next year in June, is it June? We’ll be at field days again, probably.
Chris [00:58:23]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:58:24]:
Hunting down random interesting people.
Chris [00:58:25]:
At that time, I might be able to walk around, which would be great by then. Hopefully by then I can walk.
Sam [00:58:30]:
We will see. And we will just be bringing you randomness, technology, and life every week.
Chris [00:58:36]:
But we do have, we have got something special planned for the end of the year slash beginning of new year.
Sam [00:58:41]:
We do. There is a plan for something that we would need your help for to help spread the word. But we want to do it sort of right, but to the best of our abilities.
Chris [00:58:52]:
So, when we say right, tongue is firmly planted in cheek.
Sam [00:58:56]:
Yeah, we’re going to see how that goes.
Chris [00:58:58]:
It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be fun.
Sam [00:59:00]:
It should be. So yeah, I think that’s it. Just massive thanks from myself and of course, Chris.
Chris [00:59:06]:
Yep.
Sam [00:59:07]:
Everybody that’s ever listened, everybody that’s ever spoken to us. There’s a whole bunch of people when I think about it.
Chris [00:59:13]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:59:13]:
There’s some cool stuff happening out there in general.
Chris [00:59:16]:
Yeah, we have a bunch of supporters all over the place, people that support us and, and, you know, we’ve had giveaways, well, things given us and all that sort of stuff. Really appreciate all of that. And it’s really good to hear from you guys as well. Just getting in touch and telling us what you’re up to.
Sam [00:59:34]:
Yeah, I think, I think we should have had the audio thing set up a long time ago. It would have been pretty cool, but we’ve got it now. techcast.com. Uh, so yeah, that’s it. Until next time, uh, I’m Sam.
Chris [00:59:44]:
I’m Chris.
Sam [00:59:45]:
See ya. Bye.
Excerpt
Celebrating 600 episodes with stories of metal detecting, tech gone wrong, elusive podcast awards, and listener messages from around the globe—plus robot fridges, dodgy crayfish flights, and chaotic AI adventures.
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