Every weekday, The Detail makes sense of the big news stories.
This week, the incoming government's sore lack of Pacific MPs, the student radio station battling to stay operational, the power and potential of comic books, and how the 'travellers' bible' is staying relevant in the age of information.
Whakarongo mai to any episodes you might have missed.
Pacific MPs in short supply for this government
There's set to be just one Pacific MP in government this term, Cook Islands lawyer Angee Nicholas who flipped the Te Atatu seat to blue. But her victory is far from secure – she holds a margin of just 30 ahead of special votes.
Angee Nicholas (right) with fellow National Party member Fonoti Agnes Loheni Photo: Supplied
Add to that the fact that National's likely coalition partner ACT wants to disband the Ministry for Pacific Peoples.
Does parliamentary representation matter? What does it accomplish?
Pacific Waves host Susana Suisuiki hosts a special guest episode of The Detail. She hears from AUT culture lecturer Richard Pamatatau and Pacific Media Network senior journalist Khalia Strong.
Student radio's cupboards are bare
Money is so tight at Auckland student radio station 95bFM that paper towels have been off the shopping list and the new station manager had to fix the toilet seat.
Tom Tremewan is the general manager of 95bFM. Photo: Sharon Brettkelly
Since taking over four months ago, station manager Tom Tremewan has overseen a big sell-off of the radio station's vinyl record collection and plans for a fundraising concert in December in an effort to clear the debt.
Today, Tremewan takes Sharon Brettkelly on a tour of the radio station at the top of Auckland University's student union building and outlines the problems that led to 95bFM's losses, including enforced staffing restrictions during the pandemic, a handful of natural disasters in Auckland, and an economic slowdown. Plus, we hear from Radio Broadcasters Association chair Alistair Jamison about the pressures facing the industry at large.
A brainy comic collaboration
Comics aren't all caped crusaders and evil villains – they didn't start that way, and they certainly aren't evolving in that direction.
Customer Connor McLay at the Iron Age Comics stand at the Armageddon Expo in Auckland, with shop owner David Cryer. Photo: Alexia Russell/The Detail
Increasingly the art form is being used to educate and improve communication, notably between medical experts and their patients but in all sorts of other realms too.
And forget low-brow; one of the latest developments is a collaboration between a University of Auckland professor of media and screen studies and the institution's Centre for Brain Research.
Alexia Russell speaks to Professor Neal Curtis and takes a visit to the largest comic-fest in the country, Armageddon Expo.
Making the Planet less Lonely
The world isn't what it was when Tony and Margaret Wheeler published their first Lonely Planet 50 years ago.
The Lonely Planet team at the very beginning. Photo: Supplied
Now unfettered information about the wide world is at a tourist's fingertips at a moment's notice. But the 'travellers' bible' is still keeping up in the digital age.
Less about accommodation and other tourism business listings, new revisions of its guidebooks go into the planning process and includes more detail on destinations and experiences.
It aims to update 230 guidebooks over two years.
Sharon Brettkelly speaks to NZ Herald's Thomas Bywater about the changing face of travel writing and three Kiwi Lonely Planet writers about their time travelling for the book.
Long Read: The MethaneSAT saga
This is The Detail's Long Read – one in-depth story read by us every weekend.
Artist’s rendering of MethaneSAT, the satellite EDF developed. Photo: Supplied / Environmental Defence Fund
This week, a story from RNZ’s climate change correspondent Eloise Gibson.
It’s got some big players involved: the US giant non-profit Environmental Defence Fund, our own space agency Rocket Lab, and in the middle, a clutch of Kiwi scientists who tried to warn the government that a proposed space mission wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Eloise Gibson joins us to read and discuss her story, which you can read here.
How did New Zealand come to invest 29 million dollars in a Bezos-backed methane satellite space plan than will not improve New Zealand’s methane estimates?
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