The Weekend for Saturday 6 January 2024

08:05 Tara Canton: On life After the Party

Tara Canton is the breakout star in After the Party, one of New Zealand's most talked-about TV shows. The six-part series plunges into challenging territory and stays there, after the central character Penny (Robyn Malcom) accuses her husband Phil (Scottish actor Peter Mullan) of a sex crime.

Tara may be a newcomer to TV, but her theatrical credits include performances in the 2023 musical House on Fire, WITCH music theatre's Into the Woods, and Toi Whakaari's production And What Remains.

Tara talks to Susana about how it was to play Grace, the headstrong daughter of Penny and Phil.

08:30 Author Lee Murray on winning the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement

For the first time in the 21-year history of the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement", all three categories were won by women. Lee Murray picked up the fiction award, non-fiction went to Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and Tusiata Avia picked up the poetry prize.

Lee Murray is a third-generation Chinese New Zealander and the first person of Chinese heritage to be recognised. Tusiata Avia is the first woman of Pasifika heritage to receive one of the awards and Linda Tuhiwai Smith is the first wahine Māori to receive the non-fiction award.

Over the next three Saturdays, each of the award winners will be joining us to celebrate their win and share a short extract from their work.

We're kicking off with Lee Murray, who reads an extract from her recently published sci-fi novella Despatches.

08:40 Pennie Black: Designing David Bowie

It's that time of year again to celebrate the life of Ziggy Stardust, The Picasso of Pop, The Dame, The Master of Reinvention, The Chameleon of Rock, Aladdin Sane, Major Tom, Starman, or simply, David Bowie. 

Picking the tracks is Pennie Black, a DJ and the director at Concord Music. She will also be spinning records at the annual Bowie tribute night in Tāmaki Makarau, an event she started back in 2016, after Bowie's death. 

Pennie joins Susana to talk about the many eras of David Bowie and the clothes that went with it.

09:05 Roxane Gay: On having an opinion

There's research showing it's a bit of a national trait to be agreeable in New Zealand, which doesn't work in our favour when it comes to having difficult conversations. 

Professor, cultural commentator and writer Roxane Gay no stranger to having an opinion. 

Widely known as the bestselling author of 'Bad Feminist' and the memoir 'Hunger', she's also an opinion writer for The Guardian, The New York Times and Harper's. 

Roxane joins Susana to discuss her latest book Opinions which brings together a decade of opinion writing into one collection. 

09:40 Tom Sainsbury: Diary of a Kiwi summer

Comedian Tom Sainsbury has been out there experiencing the great New Zealand summer. He joins Susana to report back with his findings.

10:05 Sexologist Morgan Penn: How to swipe right over 50

We're living longer, the divorce rate after middle age is rising, and people have many years ahead to spark new relationships. 

Online dating is an exciting world, but a very new one if you weren't swiping left or right in your teenage years.

Morgan Penn is a certified Sexologist, Sex Educator and host of the podcast Sex Life.

She joins Susana to answer questions about online dating in your 50s and 60s plus. 

10:30 Alex Reedijk: The New Zealander picking up an OBE for Scottish arts

Wainuiomata boy and long time director of he Scottish Opera Alex Reedijk had been awarded an OBE in the 2024 New Year Honours, for Services to the Performing Arts.

Alex who's at home in New Zealand for the summer and joins Susana Lei'ataua on The Weekend.

10:45 Kim Hollows: On conservation & the deer wars

Conservation in Aotearoa has changed over the years. Maybe most notably in Fiordland, where Red Deer are one of the main pests.

Eradication attempts throughout the 1960s led to the infamous Deer Wars. Helicopter crews competing to cull, and later live capture as many deer as possible. It was as dangerous and, wild as it sounds! By the 90s hunting deer from choppers became uneconomical, and the focus shifted back to trapping and baiting. 

Helicopter pilot, deer hunter and film maker Kim Hollows has been at the forefront of those attempts to control the deer population for decades. 

Starting out in "Deer recovery" aged 14 he progressed to piloting hunting helicopters, using nets to catch live deer from the moving chopper. He later went on to found the now defunct Fiordland Conservation trust.

Kim joins us from Fiordland. 

For more stories from the heli-hunting days you can listen and follow the Deer Wars podcast on Apple, Spotify or any podcast app now. It's also available via the RNZ website.

11:05 When Willpower isn't enough: Dr Gina Cleo on creating habits that last

For many of us the start of the new year is a time for goal setting and reflection. We stop and think about what we want to achieve in the upcoming 12 months. Some of us even go as far as setting resolutions. Resolutions which possibly unsurprisingly, research suggests four out of five of us have already abandoned by February. They might have been too ambitions, required too much willpower, or relied heavily on our limited reserves of self-control. 

Dr Gina Clio is one of Australia's leading habit researcher, and an expert on using habits to create lasting change. She's built a career out of helping us understand how to form new habits and break our old, undesired ones.

Her new book "The Habit Revolution" was released on Wednesday, and aims to distil a decade of research into an easy, practical guide to help you achieve your goals.

Dr Gina joins Susana Lei'ataua to explain why willpower doesn't work, and how we can rewire our brains to form good habits.

11:30 How to design the perfect back yard with Hamilton Gardens Gus Flower

Hamilton Gardens is one of the countries horticultural highlights, and that's in no small part due to the hard work of Gus Flower. He's the Operations Manager and, having been a gardener his entire life, living proof of the power of nominative determinism.

Gus joins Susana Lei'ataua to share decades of garden design wisdom, and answer some of your burning horticultural questions.