Daniel James

He styles himself as Big Chucky, who's an online sort of right-wing influencer as well.

And they call for mass deportations during this episode.

And there's a point where Carl says, I've been following you, Sam, for about a year.

And I've been receiving correspondence within Nine, outside of Nine, across the industry.

Hey, have you seen Carl today?

Isn't that a bit, hey, how are you going in terms of his line of questioning on a culture war issue or whatever it might be for about the past year?

And at that point, I had put two and two together that Carl, for whatever reason, had begun to consume a different type of content and want to prosecute a different line of inquiry.

That was a few months' lead time into what this is now.

So I wasn't shocked.

I was obviously deeply troubled and deeply disappointed, but I wasn't shocked by seeing Tommy Robinson appear on the podcast.

As you mentioned, there's been a lot of speculation that Carl wanted to get fired, to get out of his contract.

His today's show contract is up soon.

And this cancelled narrative really works for him, given the audience he's courting with these far-right guests.

This all works in his favour in a way, doesn't it?

It does.

And this is the bind I mentioned Nine have got themselves in.

It's not Nine's fault.

You can't afford to pay someone a half million dollars.

That's not an ideological decision.

That's a commercial decision.