Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has a Christmas Eve chat with Wallace Chapman about her favourite music, books and movies and her upbringing.
"Summer is the one time I read for fun," Ardern says.
Her favourites are spy stories and Antarctic exploration stories.
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing – which she first read as a teenager – is a powerful story of human resilience, she says.
"[Ernest Shackleton] was essentially on the ice for 18 months … his survival and the fact he kept his team alive, that became his success and what he was known for. That leadership I found astounding."
"I would encourage anyone to read it, it's fantastic."
Ardern listened to a lot of music growing up, and her first ever cassette was 1987's Tiffany by Tiffany, she says.
As a teenager in the 1990s, Ardern worked in a music store main street of Morrinsville and got to play whatever she wanted in the shop.
At the time, The Smashing Pumpkins were "one of the groups that I was really fanatical about", she says.
For a certain period, Ardern was simultaneously obsessed by grunge and The Beatles, she says.
"[Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band] was the first piece of vinyl I ever bought … Quite late in life I got to London and traipsed around market after market trying to find the oldest copy of this particular record that I could. I really love it."
The alternative gatefold sleeve for the Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. Photo: Public domain
The song 'This Year' by American indie folk band The Mountain Goats (2005) served as her anthem for a while.
"I remember a particularly tough election where this was my anthem. You'll probably pick up from the lyrics of the chorus why it might have appealed to me."
TV-wise, Prime Minister Ardern likes "trashy formulaic crime shows".
A favourite recent movie was 2014's Dark Horse.
"That captured a side of New Zealand that was both hopeful and devastatingly sad at the same time … I found it incredibly moving."
