November 19, 2025 • 12 mins
FIRST WITH YESTERDAY'S NEWS (highlights from Wednesday on Newstalk ZB) Our Natural Aversion to Cones and Clipboards?/Planning the Population/Trying to Care About Book Awards/Broken Cat Promises
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk said b
follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Used Talk said be you Talk.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello am I beautiful Beanies, and welcome to the bean
for Thursday. First with yesterday's news, I am Glenn Hart,
and we are looking back at Wednesday. What's happening with
our population. We've got some stats out love digging into stats,
book awards drama, so this actually might be the first
time that any story about any book awards has been interesting.
(00:48):
It might not as well. And I think we're going
to talk feral cats at the end of the podcast,
because why not. But before any of that, our workplace
safety top of mind again because of the Pike River anniversary.
I mean this workplace safety and his workplace safety isn't there.
There's minds flowing up and then there's pulling off a
(01:11):
chair trying to change a light bulb. It's going to
be a balance somewhere in between, doesn't there.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
You know, Australia is a dangerous place to work, and
yet somehow we manage to record twice as many workplace
deaths as they do. What is it our workers in
high risks jobs depending on the rules to keep themselves safe,
(01:39):
to keep their mates safe, rather than using their own
nus and judgment. They think, well, the rules are there,
I don't have to think about it. I'd have to
think about what I'm doing. Are too many workers turning
up impaired by alcohol or drugs and that impairs their judgment?
They don't see things, or they cut corners, or they're
(02:02):
tired fatigued. Are bosses cutting corners and risking people's lives?
Or are the bosses putting in health and safety protocols
that workers are simply ignoring. What is it about this
country that means we are so bad at either looking
(02:23):
after ourselves and our mates or finding ways to protect
our workers.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
We do sort of have an anti clipboard pocket, protect
the high vis, this kind of an attitude about most things,
don't we? And when I say we, I mean people
certainly people in the private sector and in small businesses.
I think obviously the public service is full of that
(02:49):
sort of stuff, but maybe our public service isn't quite
as big as it is in some other countries that
I certainly feel like Australia has a shitload of rules
and regulations. I think that's and you know, obviously that's
probably good. Comes to safety, probably less good when it
(03:10):
comes to other things.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
News talk been.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Right, population stats.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Is this a cause for concern?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Can we talk about this? Everybody wants the population to
be increasing all the time for some reason. Is this
another one of those sort of capitalism things where everybody
wants more profit all the time. We just want it
to go up ad infinitum. You can't can it?
Speaker 5 (03:36):
Which is that your average voter is going to say
no because they don't want any more migrants crowding cities
and taking houses. And politicians, the average politicians just going
to ignore it because they can't be faft coming up
with the infrastructure and the housing and the population plans
that you need to prepare for that many people coming
into the country. But let me tell you something. This
needs to happen, and it's simply because we are not
(03:56):
having enough babies of our own. One day. They need
to become workers, and they need to become taxpayers, and
they need to help pay the country's bills. Right now,
we have just looked at the superannuation problem we've got
right right now, we have four and a half workers
supporting every single pension are drawing superannuation from the government
in the next three decades or so, which is my lifetime,
your lifetime, all of our lifetimes, it's only going to
(04:17):
be down to two workers. That's unsustainable. But also bigger
is better. I mean you basically heard that from from
the bar just before. More people means we can afford
better infrastructure. We can afford better trains, we can afford
more tunnels, more bridges. We'll have more vibrant cities. We'll
have more top quality restaurants, more clever young people doing
innovative things. More artists come and stop here because there
(04:39):
are enough people wanting to buy tickets in one location
instead of forcing us to do an oasis and fly
to Melbourne to see them. Business New Zealand is right.
We do need ten million people. But my guess is
no one's going to tell them that they're right, and
no one's going to prepare for it. It will happen,
but it will happen in the same way that all
of our population growth has happened, which is unplanned and accidental.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
She's got young kids. She will have caught something off
the young kids. That's all. I feel a bit bad
when we're talking about popular unplanned population growth, saying this,
but don't ever, ever, never, ever ever never have have
kids because they will make you sick. Thank it for me, Right,
(05:27):
the big story of the day, it's got to be
the book awards. Did I just say that? It's been
our official position at the mic asking Breakfast to never
do a story about book awards because they're not really
ever stories. Generally, if it's the Children's Book Awards, it's
(05:48):
just a story about Harry Potter has won everything again,
and nobody cares about the finalists and the book Awards.
And you know there are people in the newsroom we
think that any any mention of awards and books, it's
(06:09):
got to be a news story. But this time you
can't win if you've got an AI generated cover on
your book. What's that about?
Speaker 6 (06:16):
Elizabeth Smithers team had a specific image of mind combining
a steam locomotive and an angel inspired by Mark Schaghale,
and then a human asked AI to do it. It
popped it out. Then a human refined, it is that
any different to a graphic designer pulling it together in Adobe?
But AI is spooking the creatives right. AI bands have
had hit albums Now Paul McCartney is releasing a single
(06:39):
two minutes forty five seconds of complete silence in protests
at all the AI that is stealing a sound. Morgan
Freeman is rating against AI copies of his voice. But
Elizabeth Smithers and Stephanie Johnson wrote their books, and in
Stephanie's case, the short stories have been written over twenty years.
But now her work has been canceled because of a
(07:00):
virtue signaling protest against progress. She must be heartbroken. AI
is out of the genies bottle. It's important that when
yever it's used, its influence should be credited. But it
still can't do its own thing. It still needs a
human to guide it and set it on its way.
So it's just like any other tool, including a pen
and a piece of paper. Meanwhile, on AI on Thursday,
(07:22):
we hear the Nvidia result. Now, Nvidia is the bell
weather stock of AI is the chips that they use
to fire this whole thing. And there are bears and
bulls and people talking about the bursting of the AI
tech bubble as being a thing. And I just want
to warn that AI is interesting. AI is good, but
AI is still in its infancy and there's a lot
(07:43):
a long way to go before it becomes a terminator film.
And I have to say what interesting times we live in?
And I don't agree that Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
should actually cancel Stephanie Johnson and Elizabeth Smithers.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
It's you know, it's really weird to me. I mean
you will have noticed that I've started using AI generated
images to promote this podcast, and that's really only because
my daughter told me that I should have a different
picture every time I post about this podcast in social media.
(08:15):
Instead of just the usual news stories they have been
logo and the picture of all the hosts. Does that
make my podcast more artificial? So instead of using the
same picture every time, I'm using an AI generated picture?
(08:38):
Am I a sell out to the robots? I know
what you're thinking. You're thinking, I don't know what to
think until Matt and Tyler have an opinion about it.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Look, so this awards is literally judging these books by
their covers, where as I said before, not judging the
books by the covers, refusing to judge the books because
their covers are AI. Do you care if art is
AI or not? If it's a good cover it's a
good cover. If you're looking at it and you find
it pleasing to the eye, doesn't matter that it was AI. Yeah,
I mean, especially if you bring in the AI help
(09:07):
that photosh and in design all over it. Adobe. You
can hardly look left or right when you're using Adobe
these days without them celebrating their AI initiatives that they're
putting into their software. I read a book recently and
discovered a wee way in that it was AI, and
I was disgusted and refused to read it anymore. I
(09:29):
think the reading I think a book needs to be
written by a human. I think that's disgusting.
Speaker 7 (09:34):
There's a feeling of being cheated, and I don't know.
If I've read an AI book, I must off. Surely.
I've certainly read AI passages and seen AI video, and
it's getting so good now that I am struggling to
tell whether it's A or not. But if I find
out it's AI, I feel dirty. I feel like you've
cheated me, You've actually ripped me off. You've lied to me,
and I don't like being lied to.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I struggle to see what the difference is if you
enjoy the book, who cares as long as you're not
claiming that a real person has readen it. Obviously. I
wonder if we had an AI Tyler whether he'd get
the grammar right and say must have instead of mustovs.
Probably not. It's not that good yet.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
News talk zaid bean.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Right, let's finish up with the broken comics on feral pats.
I think that's what this next week bit of audio
is going to be about. Pretty sure.
Speaker 8 (10:28):
Christopher Luxon, he's in a bit of trouble during the
TV three debate with Christopher Patrick Gower, but the two
chrisis Hipkins and lux and rasked whether they were going
to target feral cats, whether they would be added to
the list of species target and the Predator Free twenty
(10:50):
fifty agreement. Both said yes, Patrick Gower Seed, so you
will put both put them into Predator Free twenty fifty.
Absolutely was Luckson's response. Anyway, the review of the Predator
Free twenty fifty strategy has come out, and there are
(11:11):
possums and rats and mustelards, stoats, spirits, weasels, no cats.
No one quite knows why it's a puzzle. I don't
know if he's a cat lover or not. I think
he's the sort of guy he had a cat. You know,
he had a cat. You know, he's not a guy
who's got to keep a hidden cat, does he.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
How many people are out there keeping hidden cats? It
sounds like something that would happen on that show Silo.
Can't anybody find out that you're keeping a cat? Also,
I've never heard the word mustelid before. I don't think
so that's cool. I've just looked it up and Marcus
is absolutely right. That's stokes and firrets and things like that.
(11:54):
And there's a video on YouTube called World's Deadly as Musterlards.
Might have to watch that later on Thank you for
listening to the World's Least Deadly podcast. It is not
AI generated, although the cover art is I'll see you
back here again tomorrow as the robots get one step
(12:16):
closer for taking over.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
News Talk is Talking zi bean. For more from News
Talk st B, listen live on air or online, and
keep our shows with you wherever you go with our
podcasts on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk said b
follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Used Talk said be you Talk.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello am I beautiful Beanies, and welcome to the bean
for Thursday. First with yesterday's news, I am Glenn Hart,
and we are looking back at Wednesday. What's happening with
our population. We've got some stats out love digging into stats,
book awards drama, so this actually might be the first
time that any story about any book awards has been interesting.
(00:48):
It might not as well. And I think we're going
to talk feral cats at the end of the podcast,
because why not. But before any of that, our workplace
safety top of mind again because of the Pike River anniversary.
I mean this workplace safety and his workplace safety isn't there.
There's minds flowing up and then there's pulling off a
(01:11):
chair trying to change a light bulb. It's going to
be a balance somewhere in between, doesn't there.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
You know, Australia is a dangerous place to work, and
yet somehow we manage to record twice as many workplace
deaths as they do. What is it our workers in
high risks jobs depending on the rules to keep themselves safe,
(01:39):
to keep their mates safe, rather than using their own
nus and judgment. They think, well, the rules are there,
I don't have to think about it. I'd have to
think about what I'm doing. Are too many workers turning
up impaired by alcohol or drugs and that impairs their judgment?
They don't see things, or they cut corners, or they're
(02:02):
tired fatigued. Are bosses cutting corners and risking people's lives?
Or are the bosses putting in health and safety protocols
that workers are simply ignoring. What is it about this
country that means we are so bad at either looking
(02:23):
after ourselves and our mates or finding ways to protect
our workers.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
We do sort of have an anti clipboard pocket, protect
the high vis, this kind of an attitude about most things,
don't we? And when I say we, I mean people
certainly people in the private sector and in small businesses.
I think obviously the public service is full of that
(02:49):
sort of stuff, but maybe our public service isn't quite
as big as it is in some other countries that
I certainly feel like Australia has a shitload of rules
and regulations. I think that's and you know, obviously that's
probably good. Comes to safety, probably less good when it
(03:10):
comes to other things.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
News talk been.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Right, population stats.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Is this a cause for concern?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Can we talk about this? Everybody wants the population to
be increasing all the time for some reason. Is this
another one of those sort of capitalism things where everybody
wants more profit all the time. We just want it
to go up ad infinitum. You can't can it?
Speaker 5 (03:36):
Which is that your average voter is going to say
no because they don't want any more migrants crowding cities
and taking houses. And politicians, the average politicians just going
to ignore it because they can't be faft coming up
with the infrastructure and the housing and the population plans
that you need to prepare for that many people coming
into the country. But let me tell you something. This
needs to happen, and it's simply because we are not
(03:56):
having enough babies of our own. One day. They need
to become workers, and they need to become taxpayers, and
they need to help pay the country's bills. Right now,
we have just looked at the superannuation problem we've got
right right now, we have four and a half workers
supporting every single pension are drawing superannuation from the government
in the next three decades or so, which is my lifetime,
your lifetime, all of our lifetimes, it's only going to
(04:17):
be down to two workers. That's unsustainable. But also bigger
is better. I mean you basically heard that from from
the bar just before. More people means we can afford
better infrastructure. We can afford better trains, we can afford
more tunnels, more bridges. We'll have more vibrant cities. We'll
have more top quality restaurants, more clever young people doing
innovative things. More artists come and stop here because there
(04:39):
are enough people wanting to buy tickets in one location
instead of forcing us to do an oasis and fly
to Melbourne to see them. Business New Zealand is right.
We do need ten million people. But my guess is
no one's going to tell them that they're right, and
no one's going to prepare for it. It will happen,
but it will happen in the same way that all
of our population growth has happened, which is unplanned and accidental.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
She's got young kids. She will have caught something off
the young kids. That's all. I feel a bit bad
when we're talking about popular unplanned population growth, saying this,
but don't ever, ever, never, ever ever never have have
kids because they will make you sick. Thank it for me, Right,
(05:27):
the big story of the day, it's got to be
the book awards. Did I just say that? It's been
our official position at the mic asking Breakfast to never
do a story about book awards because they're not really
ever stories. Generally, if it's the Children's Book Awards, it's
(05:48):
just a story about Harry Potter has won everything again,
and nobody cares about the finalists and the book Awards.
And you know there are people in the newsroom we
think that any any mention of awards and books, it's
(06:09):
got to be a news story. But this time you
can't win if you've got an AI generated cover on
your book. What's that about?
Speaker 6 (06:16):
Elizabeth Smithers team had a specific image of mind combining
a steam locomotive and an angel inspired by Mark Schaghale,
and then a human asked AI to do it. It
popped it out. Then a human refined, it is that
any different to a graphic designer pulling it together in Adobe?
But AI is spooking the creatives right. AI bands have
had hit albums Now Paul McCartney is releasing a single
(06:39):
two minutes forty five seconds of complete silence in protests
at all the AI that is stealing a sound. Morgan
Freeman is rating against AI copies of his voice. But
Elizabeth Smithers and Stephanie Johnson wrote their books, and in
Stephanie's case, the short stories have been written over twenty years.
But now her work has been canceled because of a
(07:00):
virtue signaling protest against progress. She must be heartbroken. AI
is out of the genies bottle. It's important that when
yever it's used, its influence should be credited. But it
still can't do its own thing. It still needs a
human to guide it and set it on its way.
So it's just like any other tool, including a pen
and a piece of paper. Meanwhile, on AI on Thursday,
(07:22):
we hear the Nvidia result. Now, Nvidia is the bell
weather stock of AI is the chips that they use
to fire this whole thing. And there are bears and
bulls and people talking about the bursting of the AI
tech bubble as being a thing. And I just want
to warn that AI is interesting. AI is good, but
AI is still in its infancy and there's a lot
(07:43):
a long way to go before it becomes a terminator film.
And I have to say what interesting times we live in?
And I don't agree that Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
should actually cancel Stephanie Johnson and Elizabeth Smithers.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
It's you know, it's really weird to me. I mean
you will have noticed that I've started using AI generated
images to promote this podcast, and that's really only because
my daughter told me that I should have a different
picture every time I post about this podcast in social media.
(08:15):
Instead of just the usual news stories they have been
logo and the picture of all the hosts. Does that
make my podcast more artificial? So instead of using the
same picture every time, I'm using an AI generated picture?
(08:38):
Am I a sell out to the robots? I know
what you're thinking. You're thinking, I don't know what to
think until Matt and Tyler have an opinion about it.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Look, so this awards is literally judging these books by
their covers, where as I said before, not judging the
books by the covers, refusing to judge the books because
their covers are AI. Do you care if art is
AI or not? If it's a good cover it's a
good cover. If you're looking at it and you find
it pleasing to the eye, doesn't matter that it was AI. Yeah,
I mean, especially if you bring in the AI help
(09:07):
that photosh and in design all over it. Adobe. You
can hardly look left or right when you're using Adobe
these days without them celebrating their AI initiatives that they're
putting into their software. I read a book recently and
discovered a wee way in that it was AI, and
I was disgusted and refused to read it anymore. I
(09:29):
think the reading I think a book needs to be
written by a human. I think that's disgusting.
Speaker 7 (09:34):
There's a feeling of being cheated, and I don't know.
If I've read an AI book, I must off. Surely.
I've certainly read AI passages and seen AI video, and
it's getting so good now that I am struggling to
tell whether it's A or not. But if I find
out it's AI, I feel dirty. I feel like you've
cheated me, You've actually ripped me off. You've lied to me,
and I don't like being lied to.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I struggle to see what the difference is if you
enjoy the book, who cares as long as you're not
claiming that a real person has readen it. Obviously. I
wonder if we had an AI Tyler whether he'd get
the grammar right and say must have instead of mustovs.
Probably not. It's not that good yet.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
News talk zaid bean.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Right, let's finish up with the broken comics on feral pats.
I think that's what this next week bit of audio
is going to be about. Pretty sure.
Speaker 8 (10:28):
Christopher Luxon, he's in a bit of trouble during the
TV three debate with Christopher Patrick Gower, but the two
chrisis Hipkins and lux and rasked whether they were going
to target feral cats, whether they would be added to
the list of species target and the Predator Free twenty
(10:50):
fifty agreement. Both said yes, Patrick Gower Seed, so you
will put both put them into Predator Free twenty fifty.
Absolutely was Luckson's response. Anyway, the review of the Predator
Free twenty fifty strategy has come out, and there are
(11:11):
possums and rats and mustelards, stoats, spirits, weasels, no cats.
No one quite knows why it's a puzzle. I don't
know if he's a cat lover or not. I think
he's the sort of guy he had a cat. You know,
he had a cat. You know, he's not a guy
who's got to keep a hidden cat, does he.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
How many people are out there keeping hidden cats? It
sounds like something that would happen on that show Silo.
Can't anybody find out that you're keeping a cat? Also,
I've never heard the word mustelid before. I don't think
so that's cool. I've just looked it up and Marcus
is absolutely right. That's stokes and firrets and things like that.
(11:54):
And there's a video on YouTube called World's Deadly as Musterlards.
Might have to watch that later on Thank you for
listening to the World's Least Deadly podcast. It is not
AI generated, although the cover art is I'll see you
back here again tomorrow as the robots get one step
(12:16):
closer for taking over.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
News Talk is Talking zi bean. For more from News
Talk st B, listen live on air or online, and
keep our shows with you wherever you go with our
podcasts on iHeartRadio.
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