29 Apr 2015

On The Dial - Episode 21

9:52 am on 29 April 2015

This week in On The Dial, devastation in Nepal, gender identities and story-telling, a new stand up venue for Auckland, and we chat to comedy darling Rose Matafeo.

Host Megan Whelan

Host Megan Whelan Photo: Unknown

A huge international relief operation is gathering momentum in Nepal where millions have been affected by a massive earthquake. 

But shock is turning to anger, as people express frustration at what they believe is their government's slow response to  Saturday's huge earthquake. We speak to three young New Zealanders on the ground in Nepal. 

In the week that saw Olympic athlete and reality TV star Bruce Jenner sit down with the ABC’s Diane Sawyer to talk about Gender, it’s worth getting a refresher course in pronouns.

Aych McArdle is a primary representative for Rainbow Youth, an organisation based in Auckland City. She chats to Oliver Page about gender identity, pronouns and queer advocacy.

In case you haven’t noticed, we like comedy here at On The Dial. So we were always going to be keen to hear about a new venue during this year’s comedy festival. Montecristo Comedy is promising the finest NZ acts & internationals, plus beer, pizza and giggles every night of the fest! It’ll also have afternoon and evening shows. We hear from Sanjay Patel, who also talks about his show “Casual as.” (His best advice, for staying casual and not getting too stressed, incidentally, is “do it half-arsed.”

Rose Matefeo, on the other hand, could use some of that advice. When Charlotte Graham caught up with her, a couple of days before latest show started its run, she was almost delirious with tiredness, having just pulled an all-nighter to finish writing it. The other day, she says, she was so stressed out that she screamed in her car for no reason. It helped.

Rose is a comedian whose work is going from strength to strength, with an upcoming trip to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe, a recent successful run at the Melbourne Comedy Festival under her belt, and a gig as a writer on the Jono and Ben show – and she's only 23.

Just this weekend, she called the New Zealand Herald’s Michelle Hewitson racist, told her about therapy, and was a miffed about comments on her cleavage. She also can't stop obsessing about the inescapable reality of death. Her show for the New Zealand International Comedy Festival is called Finally Dead.

On The Dial was produced by Megan Whelan, with technical production by Dan Beban and Marc Chesterman, and financial assistance from NZonAir.

Our music was composed and performed by Eddie Johnston, and the cover image was made by Hadley Donaldson

If you’d like to subscribe to On The Dial, here’s the RSS, and it is also available on iTunes.