Standing Room Only Podcast Options

2:40 PM.After a short break under lockdown, local publishing is forging ahead. Dunedin poet, novelist and writing teacher Diane Brown has fused prose and verse to tell a new story in free narrative verse. The… Read more Audio

2:25 PM.If it weren't for the Covid-19 pandemic, Maori dancer and choreographer Eddie Elliot would be about to leave for Canada where he regularly performs with an indigenous dance company. But instead, he is… Read more Audio

1:50 PM.Theatres are learning to adapt to a world where rehearsals and productions cannot be carried out the way they once were. The Auckland Theatre Company have adapted by staging productions to stream… Read more Audio

1:33 PM.For decades he refused to allow documentary makers or biographers to tell his story, but Fashion legend Pierre Cardin has finally entrusted his personal and professional story to an American couple of… Read more Audio, Gallery

12:45 PM.A new bilingual Tongan drama called Mo'ui Faingata'a (Brutal Lives) about a former prize fighter is about to be unveiled, after getting New Zealand On Air funding from the organisation's Pasifika and… Read more Video, Audio

12:36 PM.One of the givens of the annual New Zealand International Film Festival is a strong music section. One highlight is a documentary about Seventies legends The Band called Once Were Brothers: Robbie… Read more Video, Audio

4:45 PM.It reads like a classic sci-fi scenario. A deadly pandemic strikes just as an massive international convention is about to open, throwing everything into chaos. Ten years of planning have gone into… Read more Audio

2:50 PM.Death by cheese, by cricket bat and guillotine....For 23 years the British TV detective drama Midsomer Murders has been killing off people in and around the fictional village of Causton. Anthony… Read more Audio

2:40 PM.Life was extremely tough for isolated settlers trying to survive in the kauri forests of the Far North. This is where Joanna Orwin has set her latest novel, Shifting Currents, bringing together two… Read more Audio

2:33 PM.Covid-19 came perilously close to scuttling a secondary school music contest that's been held here since 1965, the annual NZCT Chamber Music Contest. But determined that months of work by the… Read more Audio, Gallery

1:44 PM.The International Film Festival offers a wide range of delights, but often the best ones are the films that shine a new light on a story we thought we already knew well enough. One of the most… Read more Audio

1:28 PM.Southland artist Daegan Wells aims to remind people about the place of wool in New Zealand's history - social, economic and political. He has a mentor teaching him spinning and weaving skills, which… Read more Audio, Gallery

12:35 PM.The Wairarapa Eco Farm was ahead of its time, the first Community Supported Agriculture venture where people paid in advance for a season's produce. One of the first to sign up was photographer Ann… Read more Audio, Gallery

2:50 PM.He's worked on ads and with symphony orchestras. He's scored movies and now game soundtracks. APRA-award winning composer, producer and musician, Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper's CV certainly makes for… Read more Audio

2:40 PM.Wanting to tell you everything is the title of the collection that was published on what would have been Elizabeth's 80th birthday earlier this month. She died last year. Her writing group worked on… Read more Audio, Gallery

2:25 PM.An insight into the lives of transgender performers and exotic dancers working in Sydney's notorious Kings Cross in the 1960s is offered in the latest novel by best-selling Hamilton-based writer… Read more Audio

1:45 PM.Imagine being able to fly over a massive inky ocean at night, zooming in, through and around dancers, massive carvings and a haunting empty boats made out of black feathers - all without leaving home… Read more Audio, Gallery

1:33 PM.As film festivals - here and overseas - head into the great unknown and go digital, one at least remains proudly theatrical, the New Zealand Italian Festival. Simon Morris talks to Paolo Rotondo… Read more Audio

12:36 PM.Another year, another Diversity Report on gender ethnicity balance - this time from New Zealand On Air. The most glaring imbalance, once again, is among Asian creatives - on the small screen and also… Read more Audio

4:33 PM.Last week we spoke to some of the leaders of the film and TV industries - the Film Commission, New Zealand On Air, various top producers. But it's the people on the ground who are doing it hard, post… Read more Audio

2:50 PM.Philippa Blair has been painting on and making cloaks out of canvas since the 1970s. The artist returned to New Zealand in 2014 after 20 years based in Los Angeles where she exhibited work and taught… Read more Audio

2:37 PM.Wellington writer David Coventry's second novel was inspired by the Eighties post-punk hardcore movement - bands like Husker Du, Dead Kennedies and Black Flag. Read more Audio

2:25 PM.Four Maori and Pasifika Festivals are the first to receive up to $100,000 from the new Creative and Cultural Events Incubator fund. The government says the incubator fund provides seed and development… Read more Audio

1:47 PM.Artist Eve Barlow has trusted 14 artists to take her not quite finished paintings, and complete them in any way they like. Read more Audio

12:48 PM.She's helped create some of the most popular and influential movie soundtracks of recent times - Pulp Fiction, Clueless, Boogie Nights and Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet. Read more Video, Audio