Saturday Morning Podcast Options

8:40 AM.A recent study conducted at the University of Essex has examined the characteristics that can lead to someone being chalked up as 'boring'. Led by experimental social psychologist Dr Wijnand Van… Read more Audio

8:13 AM.Most people would not have heard of Aleksandr Dugin, the Russian philosopher and geopolitical strategist who is sometimes referred to as Putin's brain.  Julian Walker is the co-host of the podcast… Read more Audio

11:55 AM.Listener feedback for 19 March 2022. Audio

11:35 AM.Organic gardener Kath Irvine returns to share some autumn gardening tips and to answer your questions,. This is a time in the garden for both harvesting and preparing for winter. Kath shares some… Read more Audio

11:05 AM."I'll be grand, girl, I've great faith," Noelle McCarthy's mother Carol told her just before she died. Raised in the Irish city of Cork, Noelle “ran away” to New Zealand as a young woman, but things… Read more Audio

10:05 AM.Teremoana Rapley started her music career as a teenager in the late 80s performing with politically conscious hip hop group Upper Hutt Posse. In the years following, she has worked with countless… Read more Audio

9:05 AM.Gabriel Gatehouse's BBC podcast series The Coming Storm, not only delves into QAnon's origins but how it remains a major force within the Republican party. Previously a BBC foreign correspondent… Read more Audio

8:35 AM.Ann Goldstein has been translating the work of celebrated Italian author Elena Ferrante for close to two decades. However, Goldstein has never met or even spoken to the pseudonymous author, and is… Read more Audio

8:10 AM.China's lockdowns are a worry for the global economy, adding pressure to the supply chain and contributing to higher prices around the world. Rodney Jones is an economist and principal of Wigram… Read more Audio

11:06 AM.Now installed in central Berlin is a fully functional, open source cellphone tower that, in luminous hot pink, asking to be noticed. It's the work of New Zealand artist, activist and 'critical… Read more Audio, Gallery

10:05 AM.Alan Jansson is arguably best known for his role in helping to create OMC's 1995 smash hit 'How Bizarre', but more than a decade earlier the producer and engineer was pioneering New Zealand… Read more Video, Audio

9:46 AM.Years in the making, the Waitemata Table Tennis Club in Auckland recently opened a purpose-built table tennis stadium to the tune of $2 million. The modern building replaced the previous stadium that… Read more Audio

9:07 AM.When Irish economist David McWilliams spoke to RNZ in October 2020 - roughly six months into the pandemic - he said it was time for governments to spend and ignore warnings to the contrary. Eighteen… Read more Audio

8:23 AM.Not all nations last, and as author Gideon Defoe points out sometimes it's for the best. In his new book An Atlas of Extinct Countries, Defoe explores the fascinating and sometimes outlandish stories… Read more Audio

8:10 AM.Response has been mixed to this week's announcement that RNZ and TVNZ will come under a new media entity. With much detail still to be revealed, many questions are as yet unanswered. Former New… Read more Audio

6:08 PM.Michael Schur is an American television writer and producer whose list of impressive credits include creating the award-winning fantasy comedy show The Good Place. Set in the afterlife, the show deals… Read more Video, Audio

11:59 AM.Kim Hill reads listener feedback for 5 March 2022. Audio

11:09 AM.Comedian Pax Assadi doesn't shy away from the realities of immigrant family life in his new comedy series. Raised by Refugees is based on Pax's own childhood in Auckland and set in the early 2000s. Read more Audio

10:10 AM.We have been told wrong: inequality is not the price of civilisation, says archaeologist David Wengrow. Many long held assumptions about how humans developed as a species are blown apart by Wengrow… Read more Audio

9:48 AM.An upcoming exhibition entitled To Fashion: Dressing Aotearoa documents the style of 12 distinctive individuals including rising poet Tayi Tibble, mental health advocate Sir John Kirwan, K'road… Read more Audio, Gallery

8:39 AM.Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer looks poised to enter the medicinal cannabis arena with a US$6.7 billion agreement to purchase Arena Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company with a pipeline dedicated to… Read more Audio

8:20 AM.Russia's state regulator Roskomnadzor says it has decided to block access to Facebook in Russia. Meanwhile on Friday night (NZ time) the Russian parliament passed legislation imposing a jail term of… Read more Audio

8:13 AM.The world narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe on Friday when a fire broke out during a Russian seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the US ambassador to the United Nations… Read more Audio

11:59 AM.Listener feedback from today's show. Audio

11:35 AM.What if Dr Frankenstein's monster had been cast away in a fjord in Aotearoa's deep south? This is the proposition explored by Vincent O'Sullivan in Mary's Boy, Jean Jacques, and other stories out next… Read more Audio