August 27, 2025 • 44 mins
In this edition of Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin, we hear the heart-wrenching but uplifting story of Timoti te Moke - who turned his life around and is now a doctor and role model to so many.
And Francesca speaks with Dr Rachel Clarke about the fascinating world of organ donation - and the case that sparked interest around the world.
Plus we all know Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Conchords fame. But he's gone on to produce music for Hollywood blockbusters and he talks with Francesca about his new album Freak Out City.
Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin brings you the best interviews from Newstalk ZB's The Sunday Session.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB. The big names, the fascinating guests,
the thoughtful conversations, bringing you the best interviews from the
Sunday Session. This is Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin, empowered
(00:27):
by News Talks AEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hello and welcome to Great Chats. I'm Francesca Rudkin, host
of the Sunday Session on News Talks EDB, and in
this podcast we pick some of our favorite feature interviews
from over the last month for you to enjoy. Coming up,
Doctor Rachel Clark talks about the unique field of organ
donation and Brett Mackenzie on his fabulous new album freak
Out City. But first up today an interview that struck
(00:49):
a chord with many of our listeners. Doctor Temorte ti
Moque's story is extraordinary. He went from being abused as
a child to committing crime and ultimately becoming a gang member,
but through rehabit education, he became a paramedic and graduated
medical school at the age of fifty six. Started by
asking him why he decided to share his story in
(01:10):
his new book, The Unlikely Doctor.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Basically like my life has been quite unique, unique in
terms of me having the ability to not only write
a book, but to excel to where I am at
the moment. And there are a lot of people that
could be where I am, but now, due to the
barriers that that society have put in place, they are
(01:33):
not able to do this. And so essentially what my
book is looking at is the potential that this country
could have if we realize that these are the barriers
in place, and how we need to mend them in
order to allow this country every just potential.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
At the very beginning of the book, you talk about
how you like to where you know, you bust to
and from work at Middlemall Hospital, and you like to
wear your doctor scrubs and you keep your idea on
you that you know calls you a doctor and things
purely so that other kids can say, oh, look, this
is a mar doctor.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Absolutely. I stay South Aukland, I stay in public tooid
and there's not many Marty doctors or Pacifica doctors. And
so what I need to do is I need to
show that that martin Pacifica can be doctors. You know,
they need to see a brown skin doctor out there
walking around, and then it needs to happen often, and
it needs to happen in such a way that people
(02:26):
become normalized to it and go, yeah, that's that's just
what we do out in South Auckland. And there's a
partner book where I talk about uh traffic lights up
by Hunter's Corner shopping center and I'm waiting across and
across the road as a young boy and he must
have been about eight years old or something, and he's
standing next to his bike and he's and he's waiting
(02:46):
across yet and I'm looking across him and he's staring
at me, and he's checking me out, man, and I'm
thinking a yeah. And then the walk sign gaze and
we cross crossing pass and and he looks up at
me and guess I guess hey bro, and I get
hey Roy, And he was beaming in that and and
it was the experience last maybe a second, two seconds,
(03:06):
and then he walks on his way in. And that's
what I want, because in a second I realized that
if I was wearing a gang patch, he would have
done exactly the same. This is because this young boy
is looking for something to aspire to and like he's
more likely to see a gang patch than a Marti doctor,
(03:29):
and so what needs to happen and needs to be normalized.
So he sees that all the time, and it's reinforcing
his mind. And so by the time he turns forteen
fifteen sixteen, he thinks, you know what, might become a doctor,
or you know what, I might become a loyal and
you know what, I might become an engineer, And he
doesn't have any of that psychological barrier. Rather than him
(03:49):
turning fifteen sixteen game, you know what, I want to
be a gangster, because that's all he's grown up with.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Can we talk about you at fifteen or sixteen? It
was quite a childhood. Maybe just tell me a little
bit at first about your childhood.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
My childhood. Yeah, well, I'm part Marty tongue and I've
never known my dad because they separated before I was born.
My mom and dad separated for I was born. All
I know about him was that he liked to drink
and he liked to hurt people. But then my mom,
she was up here in Tamiki working and she came
down to where my grandparents were in Matata, and she
(04:25):
had me Intani hospital. Now, the thing is she was
at the stage of her life where she wasn't She
didn't want to be a mom, so she gave me
to my grandparents. It's called fin line and it's quite
common in Marty cultures. So I was finally to my
caudle and I was given his name. So I was
born Timothy up at Halma, Timwok, and I lived with
him for the first six years of my life and
(04:46):
it was amazing. Like I it was beautiful. We were
very poor, but still I wanted for nothing, and I
was in a loving home, very supportive culturally where they
spoke Marty yeah, and it was good. And they come
up here to Tamiki and I was around all my
cousins and that I was beautiful. Then by the time
I turned six, my mom decided she wanted me back.
(05:07):
And by this time she had married this guy with
the name of Morrison. But because I was born tim Mouk,
I was legally my grandfather's child. So my mom did
is she took my court to the court. I said
this guy she had married, Morrison, she had married was
my actual dad and stuck his name on the birth certificate.
Then I went from Timothy tem Mok to Tim Morrison,
(05:29):
and they uplifted me. And they were dysfunctional people that
were dysfunctional as hell, and life took a real hard
turn for me. My stepfather hated me. Every time he
saw me saw another man. He just couldn't take it.
I'd be I remember, I'm eight years old and I'm
in my room and I'm shaking like her because I
(05:50):
hear his car rolling up into the carpboard, and I
know what's going to happen. You get off out of
the car and off his face and just walk into
my room, pulled me out of bed, and just slammed
a living and crap out of me and then just
leave me this buddy mess on the floor, go sex
with my mom and got us. And sometimes this is
what happened to me maybe three times a week. Eight
(06:11):
years old, and that happened to me three times a week,
you know. So by the time I turned fourteen, man,
I'm broken. I am broken, man. But here's the thing.
I grew up in an area where I wasn't the
only kid that that was happening to. What that allowed
me to do was allowed me to hang out with
kids that were similar to me. We never talked about it,
(06:31):
but somehow we just were so connected and it was
because of that stuff, even though we didn't talk about it.
And by that time, I'm broken. I'm not going to
school anymore, and I start getting into trouble. I had
my first official charge for attempted burglary affording ended up
in oy Ka boys home. Fortunately enough, I am. I
(06:56):
don't know how it worked, but my English teacher found
out and I went to stay with them for a year.
Beautiful family, beautiful family, but I'm broken, and so I
don't know how to engage with it. I don't know how.
I don't know what it is, you know, And so
it doesn't matter how much love and attention they gave
me and how much support. I didn't know how to
(07:18):
utilize that. I'm broken.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
It's really interesting because I think that that pops up
throughout your life. There, you know, there are moments where
you do get yourself together, and if I skip forward
a little bit, you end up in Australia and you
go to rehab and you get clean, and actually you
end up with your own security business and life is
going well. But interestingly, if the wrong person came into
your life, where if things got a bit wobbly. Yeah,
(07:40):
everything would fall over again, wouldn't it. And I mean
it's so I suppose my question to you is, and
I look at you, you know now, I think you
were fifty six when you graduated as it a doctor,
which is and it's a phenomenal story as to how
you got there's so much in between. But how important
is it to deal with that kind of trauma that,
of course you do not understand or able to process
(08:03):
when you're a young man.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
That's a good question. And and the thing was, I
got married and I got divorced, and I just everything
hit the skids. But what had happened is like from
from right back at the beginning till then I was evolving,
And in the rehab was the first time ever I
learned about the things underneath that that that were happening
(08:29):
and the reasons behind the reasons why I was doing stuff.
And so I was starting to understand that. And I
think if I hadn't gone there and I had rocked
by them again, things would have been a lot different
from me. And and that's how it is through all
my life, like I've been able to utilize tools that
I got at that time to to to help me
(08:51):
manage for the future. Yeah, going back, like I were
hanging out with those kids, I utilized the tools that
I got because I needed them for when I went
to prison, and I lentized and I got tools in
there they utilized for when I got out of prison,
and I utilize those tools that I found there when
I got to Australia, and then I utilized those tools
(09:12):
that hone. There's those tools to to go okay, carry on,
and and it just kept going from there.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
At no point, you know, when you're going through your
teenage years, you're in a lot of trouble and you
end up at a you know, sort of corrective training,
you end up in a boot camp, you end up
in Mount eat in prison. All this kIPS you know,
this is kind of a bit of a regular occurrence
for you. At any point, did anyone look at you
as a vulnerable child or a victim, you know, especially
(09:41):
when you were younger as well, when you started, you know,
you're a bright kid, You're at school and all of
a sudden, you're not.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Going my grandparents and the school teachers and her family.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
So some people did try.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Some people did try, but like I said, by the
time they got around to it, especially my school teacher
and her family, it was too late, mate, Like, you
can't you can't just go and turn off a tap.
It's not a tap. Yeah, and you can't turn it
off and get okay, from now on, we'll put a
wash on it, we'll fix it and now to be fine. Yeah, yeah, no,
(10:17):
it doesn't work like that, and so so because of that,
I had to evolve through it, and I think it
came down on a large part to come down to
the first six years I spent with my grandparents and
I was born, you know, without an e I was
born quite a smart kid, and with that intelligent intelligence,
(10:41):
I was able to kind of not only negotiate my
way through stuff, but also be able to step back
and work out how things what things need to happen
at that time.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, I mentioned that you ended up in corrective training.
You went on it's sort of what we now would
call a boot camp. But you've got quite an interesting
perspective on what that can create, and of course the
government has reintroduced them now. I thought this was quite interesting.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Absolutely, like they've brought in the boot camps and yeah,
that that is not going to work. It's actually going
to be it's actually going to make things a hell
of a lot worse. And you can guarantee this. Like
I did boot Camp, I came out fit, I came
out disciplined, I came out angry. Now the only thing
(11:30):
that was missing that that I didn't have is someone
out here, like a leader with foresight and resources that
could have honed those tools into something that was effective
for that group. And the thing is today they do
have groups with charismatic leaders that do have resources. And
(11:53):
now what this government is are attempting to do is
they're attempting to do exactly what they did to me.
Put these guys in there and release them back out
into the community that are angry, that are fit, that
are disciplined and can take orders.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah, and you make the point, that's going to make
them really good productive gang members.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
They're going to be like they each each group, each
each different gang, will have their own little individual elite
force within it, and it'll be made up of these
these people. And and the thing is that that they
these clubs now have resources to invest in that to
(12:33):
actually hone them and perfect them into a into a
focus and that's the thing that I missed, and which
is fortunate for me, but also very fortunate for this
country because when I did end up in Australia and
I did end up with charismatic leaders with resources, I excelled. Yeah,
and I became one of the top ranking people in
(12:54):
those kind of clubs. And so so the thing is
that now here the government thinks, oh, yeah, well we'll
just do this and and and and we'll show that
we're tough on crime. Their idiots, mate.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
You don't think the gang problem's going to go away never.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
This is because gangs they reflect where society is failing. Yeah,
they mirror society's fails.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
And so the if you want to the marsh gangs,
you have to demolister the drivers the same as crime.
You can't be tough on crime. You got to you
gotta take care of the drivers of crime and so
so so that you've got to take care of the
drivers of people becoming gangsters. You need more Mardy doctors,
(13:43):
you need more Marty lawyers, you need more Mardy engineers,
you need more brown skinned people walking around In South Auckland,
they have scrubs on rather than gang patches. That's what
you need.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
That teacher that you had at school always instilled in
you the importance thinglish teach, the importance of education, and
later on you you did educate yourself. You study acupuncture,
you became a paramedic, and then you ended up at
medical school. Has your life experience made you a better doctor?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
One dred percent and h It's made me so much
more have the ability to engage with people on different
levels and also engage with people in a way that
no other doctor.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Kemp the biggest names from the Sunday session Great Chats
with Franchesca Rudkin on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
At B That was doctor demlte to make a truly
inspirational story, right. I know that many of you have
read the book. Quite a few of you have even
touched base with me and suggested that we interview him.
So clearly a lot of interest, so I really wanted
to put this at the beginning of the podcast for you.
The book is called The Unlikely Doctor. Up next another doctor.
(15:02):
Her name is doctor Rachel Clark. She's a palliative care
doctor with the NHS in the UK. Her latest book,
The Story of a Heart at Won the twenty twenty
five Women's Prize for Nonfiction, and it tells the story
of organ donation, and it centers on the stories of
nine year olds Max and Kira. It's a book about innovation,
(15:23):
grief and hope, and it quite literally reduced me to tears.
So we began this conversation by talking about why Rachel
wanted to write about organ donation.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
All the way back to medical school, I was completely
captivated by organ donation, even though I didn't become a surgeon,
let alone a transplant said in myself, I just thought
this idea that we are capable, thanks to medical science,
of removing a warm, living organ from somebody who has
(15:59):
usually very tragically perished, but then we can send it,
sometimes one hundreds thousands of miles away to another hospital
and save the life of another adult or child, completely astonishing.
I think that organ donation is just a triumph really
of medical science, and I was always fascinated. I witnessed
(16:26):
some organ surgeries during my training, and then I came
across the story of little Max and Kira when I
had much later specialized in palliative medicine, my specialty, that
their story just stopped me in my tracks.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
It is an incredible story and it's a it's a
fantastic way actually to write a book around organ donation,
right to because there's more to the book than just
this story. We get a lot of medical history and
things and I'll get to there a little bit later.
But and I hate to use the pump, but they
are at the heart of the story. So can you
tell me a little bit about Mex and Kira?
Speaker 5 (17:05):
Yes. So, in the UK a few years ago, in
twenty seventeen, there was a big campaign to change the
law around organ donation to an opt out system, so
it's assumed that you would be happy to consent all
the donation unless you've said otherwise. And a little boy, Max,
(17:29):
who was nine years old, became one of the children
whose face one day appeared on the front of a
British newspaper as part of that campaign. He had been
waiting for a heart transplant for many, many months. He
was desperately ill, and almost at any moment he was
(17:50):
sick enough to die, and his mum agreed to tell
his story in public in the hope that it would
help change the law and also maybe people would think
about children and adults slight Max and have the conversation
with their loved ones about donation. So I came across
(18:13):
this story when Max's face appeared on the front page
of a newspaper that I happened to read. He looked
desperately ill. Then a few months later his face appeared again,
and now it was rosy cheeked and brimming with health
because luckily, at the eleventh hour he had received a transplant.
And then a few months after that, the extraordinary thing happened.
(18:37):
One day, two families appeared on the front page of
the Mirror newspaper, and Kiira, the little girl who had
tragically died in a car crash and whose heart saved
Max's life. Her mum had worked out from the publicity
that her heart had probably saved Max, and she got
(18:57):
in touch with Max's mum and sent her a message
via social media saying, I think your little boy has
our daughter's heart and it's the most beautiful heart in
the world. And the two mums started communicating, and that
culminated in both families meeting in person, and one by one,
Kira's mom, dad, and siblings all lined up and listen
(19:22):
to her heart with a stethoscope beating inside the chest
of the little boy whose life she'd saved. And when
I read that story, I couldn't think about anything else.
I knew it was one of the most extraordinary stories
I'd ever hear, and that gave me the idea as
a writer to write a book about this extraordinary journey
(19:44):
of Kira's heart. That would be a way of telling
this wonderful, wider story about the medical miracle that is transplantation.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Kira's family and Kira are quite extraordinary people. They make
the selfless decision at the worst possible moment in their lives.
How do humans find the capacity to deal with the
question of a loved one becoming an organ doner.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
So it is I think the most extraordinary aspect of
this story, and indeed every successful trans story at the
center is a family going through the most unimaginable grief devastation.
Often there is a sudden accident, like a car accident,
and this family is having to come to terms with
(20:32):
the fact that someone they love so desperately maybe appears
to simply be sleeping, but because of brain injuries, their
brain has died. They can no longer live, and it
is remarkable how in those times of utter darkness people
have a capacity to draw upon reserves of resilience and
(20:56):
generosity and sheer radical altruism that they might not even
have known they had. And that's exactly what Kira's family did.
So I interviewed both families and all the medical staff
involved in this story, and incredibly, nobody even brought up
organ donation with Kira's family. Her sister, a little girl
(21:20):
who was only eleven years old at the time, called Caitlin,
turned to the intensive care doctor and said, can we
donate Kira's organs? And the doctor said she had never
ever encountered a child asking that question before, so she
was taken aback, but she said, yes, of course, if
that's what you want. And then little Caitlin turned to
(21:42):
her dad and said, Dad, we have to do this.
Kira is such a kind girl, she's so loving. I
know it's what she would want. And Kira's dad, Joe, said, yes,
you are totally right, we must do this. And I
just think that's a in a way, that's an emblem
and microcosm of everything that people are capable of. We
(22:05):
often hear bad news stories. There is so much violence wars,
worrying stories around the globe. But fundamentally, people can be
and are extraordinary, and very often when they're in the
darkest circumstances themselves.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
For the recipient, this relief that you know, maybe the
only option leaf to save their life is possible as
going a heat, but it comes with their guilt of
knowing that someone else has died and that other people
are suffering. It's tough, isn't it.
Speaker 5 (22:40):
It's really tough, and Max, although he was only nine
years old, he understood this terrible arithmetic of organ donation.
For him to live, someone else would have to die.
And no recipient, and no recipient family ever wants a
(23:02):
tragedy to happen to another child, another adult. All they
hope is that if a tragedy happens, that family might
consider this act of altruism because it's the only way
their loved one can live. And Kia is a beautiful
example of that. There were two children and two adults
whose lives were saved thanks to Kia and the generosity
(23:24):
of her family, and now every single day her father
Joe told me he thinks of Kia and he thinks
of what a kind, gorgeous girl she was, and how
proud he is of her because she has that living legacy.
So sometimes, although this is a story that involves heartbreak,
(23:47):
organ donation can give families a huge amount of comfort.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
In a Mexa's case, it was an end for his family.
It wasn't just the relief of getting the hat. You
then have to get your heir around what is going
to happen, which is actually that surgeons are going to
cut out mex Has hat, which is tend to amount
to him dying in place a new one and and
(24:13):
hope that it works. I mean, there is also a
lot for a patient to get the hit around, doesn't.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
It, Absolutely so, I think, And actually it's a lot
for the surgeons as well. So I interviewed maxis surgeons
and everybody Max his family has surgeons. They all talked
about the enormity of the surgery. If you think about
it objectively, it almost sounds like science fiction. So so,
(24:42):
first of all, the a major artery and a major
vein in Max's body was connected to a bypass machine
that oxygenated his blood outside the body. And these machines
they look like science fiction. There are kind of mass
(25:03):
of wires and tubes. It's extraordinary. And then you have
to literally saw the breastbone in half and manually pull
the rips apart. And then of course you have to
remove the heart. And there is this surgeon are staring
(25:25):
at an empty chest. There is nothing there where the
heart should be. And to all intents and purposes, unless
you successfully stitch the new heart in, you have killed
the child. So everything rests on your skill and your
fingers and all your surgical training, and you have to
keep an utterly cool head under pressure and perform this
(25:48):
vital surgery. And of course that's exactly what successfully happened
in Max's case. But he was very, very frightened before
the surgery, and his family were absolutely terrified, you know,
on ten to hooks, just waiting hour by hour by
hour hoping the new would be good. And in the
(26:08):
old days, heart transplants were a real lottery, more many
more people died than lived. But today, because the surgeons
are so skilled, the vast majority of people do survive.
At least they certainly survive the surgery itself. But you
always have to worry about rejection of the organ. You
(26:30):
take very very strong and unosuppressant drugs for the rest
of your life. And thankfully Matts has thrived and today
he is this strapping, healthy, six foot to sixteen year
old boy. He's just done his big exams in the
UK GCSE exams and he's looking forward to probably going
(26:52):
to college. And all of this is thanks to Kira
and her family.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
We learn a lot about the history of transplants in
the book, which I found really fascinating. But also it
hadn't really occurred to me that there had to be
so many medical advancements before trains plants were even possible.
You talk about the creation of the ICU or bypass
all these things, Rachel, it's beastnitting.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
Yes, And that was an aspect of writing a book
that I love, delving deeply into the history because always
with medicine, once a breakthrough happens very very quickly, we
take it for granted. So if you think of the
COVID nineteen pandemic, the thing that was frightening was the
(27:36):
idea that there might not be enough ventilators for everybody
with COVID who needed them.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
None of us thought for a.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
Second about the fact that ventilators have only been in
existence since the nineteen fifties, and one of the stories
I tell in the book is about the invention of
ventilators and of intensive care units, and they all originated
from the polio pandemics and epidemics that we used to
(28:04):
have before vaccination, and the extraordinary courage really of an
individual doctor in Copenhagen in Denmark who was faced with
a little child in front of him, a little girl
who couldn't breathe because polio had panglanized her muscles and breathing,
(28:25):
and he decided to manually squeeze air into her lungs.
And then all of the medical students in Copenhagen, hundreds
hundreds of them, were enlisted to manually squeezees, bag and
mask ventilate it's called squeeze oxygen in and out of
(28:47):
these poor children who are paralyzed with polio until they recovered.
And that is what led to the ventilators and the
intensive care units that today save thousands and thousands of
people the world over. So medicine is filled with these
extraordinary historical stories which we don't think about because we
(29:07):
take the advances as given, we've grown up with them.
We don't see them as remarkable but every one of
these advances has an incredible story behind it.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Rachel, you mentioned the word their courage, and it just
sort of occurred to me that everybody in this book,
that is the one thing they all have in common,
I think is courage, from the nurses, to the surgeons,
to the family members, everybody involved. It kind of sums
up this book beautifully. It is a book full of courage.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
I completely agree with that, because I think courage is
not necessarily choosing to face something that frightens you. Courage
is finding yourself in a situation where you have no
choice and the only thing you can choose is how
to respond.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Bringing you the best interviews from the Sunday Session Great
Chats with Francesca Rudkin on iHeartRadio and powered by News
Talks it Be.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
That was doctor Rachel Clark. The book is called The
Story of a Heart Look. I found it really fascinating.
I was really interested in the medical advancements that it
had to happen for organ donation to happen, and just
the general history of organ donation.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
But I'm not gonna lie. You will need to read.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
This book with a box of tissues by your side.
I was sobbed all the way through it. It's a
beautiful story, but it's pretty moving. Right to finish up, today,
I am joined by the fabulous Brett Mackenzie to talk
about his new album, Freak Out City, and we're also
going to talk about writing music for movies and inheriting.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
Fifty race horses. Now that's a story.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
I started by asking him about the first single off
the album. It's called All I Need, which he wrote
for his wife.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
It's a love song for Hannah. And we've been together
a long time. We got together when we're in our
twenties and well twenty I think, and exactly, and so you.
Speaker 6 (31:03):
Do the math. But I'm forty nine.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
And yeah, it's funny when you've been in a relationship
that long. You've got to be honest. There are some
days you love each other more than other days. And
this song one of those, you know, one of those
days when things are going great. I sat down the
piano and came up with this song. So it's a
sweet love song.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Can you tell me how some advice from the Beatles?
How would you write the verse?
Speaker 6 (31:31):
Yes, yeah, good question. I wrote the chorus.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
And sometimes songs they pop into your head and you
get a piece of them, and then parts of them
are left and you're not sure what to do with them.
And around the time when I was writing the song,
I watched that Peter Jackson made that documentary about the Beatles,
and I don't know if you've seen that, about eight
hours eighty hours of hanging out with the Beatles, and
there's one scene where George Harrison is working on a
(31:54):
song and it's actually the chords to something in the Worshimers,
you know, but he didn't have the lyrics and he
said to John, you know, I just don't know what
the lyric should in John, and goes just sing pomegranate
and the lyrics will come. And I was like, that's
so good, because like being a songwriter, watching the Beatles
(32:15):
write songs is like a masterclass. And so it was like,
oh my god, that's so great. So for a whole
tour we toured. I toured the first first album and
I sang the song live and I just sang pomegranate
in the verse, just sort of made up blur and
I had a.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
Few lines and then just rhymed them with pomegranate.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
And Yeah, eventually it took me a couple of years,
but I replaced those.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
It was worth spending all those hours watching that documentary
just for that little chestnut's song writing was absolutely I don't.
Speaker 6 (32:43):
Know if you saw it.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
There was another one where you watch Paul McCartney and
you see the desperation that he's got to They've got
to come up with some songs. They've promised an album
and you see him just hitting the bass, rocking out
this beat and just forcing lyrics out of his mouth.
Speaker 6 (32:57):
That's great to watch.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Other than Hannah, what's the inspiration behind this album?
Speaker 4 (33:03):
I think the inspiration behind the album is kind of
a seventies live energy.
Speaker 6 (33:10):
I wanted a.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
Record that felt like a group of people in a
room playing together. I've got this amazing band of New
Zealand musicians and when we play there's a lot of
there's a lot of life and musical conversation going on,
and I wanted to capture some of that in a
record in the way that I think nineteen seventies.
Speaker 6 (33:27):
Records really did beautifully.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
And then lyrically, the songs a collection of songs that
I wrote over about a year and at the time,
you don't have a theme, and I didn't have a
real mission about what the album was going to be.
I just collected my favorite songs that came together. But
then when you in retrospect, you look back and you
see there are some threads of optimism and hope in
(33:54):
a kind of modern world of fairly disastrous global news
and events. And there's one song in particular, Eyes on
the Sun, which I think really captures that which is
is about. I had a friend who was just getting
so down about social division and climate change, and I
(34:17):
could see that it was breaking her, and I thought, gee,
you've also got to You've got to bring it's not
helping you thinking about these things, and you're not changing
them by thinking about them, So it's bringing their optimism
in amongst it.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
It is a wonderful time to be releasing this album.
I do feel like we needed it. It's just warm,
it's upbeat, but lyrically pertinent. You know. I think what
you've just said there makes a huge amount of sense
from the experience that I had listening to it. Eight
piece band worked on this album with you. That's quite big.
Is that quite a bit of coordinating.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
The eight piece band is not something I would advise
you start like the amount of texts and emails to
coordinate a very simple like practice is pretty hilarious.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah, this album has been in the work for a while.
It was delayed somewhat as you looked after your father
in twenty twenty three and he sadly passed away. And
I know he was a huge fan of your work
and an inspiration to you, breet, wasn't he?
Speaker 4 (35:14):
Yeah, very much, so, big fan, big supporter. Really loved songs,
and he really loved melodies that kind of that. He
loves a lot of nineteen sixties music and the melodies
are really strong, and a lot of that music, he
loved it. When you could understand the lyrics. He got
(35:35):
very angry with rock music or you couldn't hear the lyrics.
But yeah, big fan, And yeah, I sort of lost
a year there. He got brain cancer and it was
quite fast actually, and so it was in some ways
it was pretty lucky, but we lost about there was
I feel like twenty twenty three is a bit of
(35:57):
a blur.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, is it true when he passed you inherited fifty
race horses.
Speaker 6 (36:02):
Yeah, good research.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
Yeah, so my dad it's a horse trainer, and my
mum is a ballet teacher, dance dance company. Really mixed
mixed bag and yeah. When dad passed away, me and
my two brothers inherited his farm, which had fifty race horses,
twenty cattle, and about fifty forty sheep. And none of
(36:28):
us are farm people. My brothers work in hospitality and
it and I do show business. And so we found
ourselves on the farm trying to fix troughs. And I
was trying to get the four wheel drive and not
even a four wheel drive. This is how much farming
knowledge I have. The quad bike, that's what we call it.
I was trying to get the quad bike going and
(36:49):
I had to YouTube a video how to get it
into reverse because I couldn't get it out of the shed.
Speaker 6 (36:54):
So yeah, yeah, one of my dad times.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
Yeah, my dad's friend said to him in hospital, He's like,
don't you like your children?
Speaker 6 (37:01):
Don't you like your sons? He's like, why, because you're
leaving them fifty horses. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:06):
Anyway, we've given away a lot of horses and I've
got a few left.
Speaker 6 (37:11):
If anyone wants a race horse, let me know.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Oh my goodness, what a story. Brit songwriting is your
main gig? Now, not just for your own albums, but
of course you've been writing for movies for a while. Now,
what's the balance.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
I spend most of my time now, particularly the last
few years, writing songs for films. That's my main job.
I'd say I wrote a few songs for the Minecraft movie.
Speaker 6 (37:35):
That, and they come along. I kind of love.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
Them because they're not They don't take too long, so
you focus on them for a few weeks and then
you kind of move on. They don't whereas film scripts.
I've written some film scripts, and they really take a
year or eighteen months. And there's something quite fun about
songs is that I can you can do one and
then I can go to my kids' school camp and
(38:02):
I can and then I can do another song and
then do other things around them. It's much more Yeah,
a much more balanced kind of life.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Yeah, this might be an odd question for someone who
does this for a living, but are there only so
many songs to go around?
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Like?
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Is it quite hard to find this space as well
to work on your own music while trying to also
create for other people and then needs.
Speaker 6 (38:30):
Yeah, it's funny you said that.
Speaker 4 (38:31):
The other day I was working on a song a
demo for a new animated movie, and.
Speaker 6 (38:36):
I've done quite a lot of work on it.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
I've got the demo ap I was recording it and
doing some vocals and I was playing to keep a
player from my band, Leo. He was doing some keys
on it, and then I paused and went, oh, this
is the same as like as a song called heard Feelings,
like a concord song that a just go. So sometimes
you accidentally fall into your own patterns because you kind
(38:59):
of I think songwriters tend to use similar patterns. Yeah,
that was quite funny. I was like, Oh, it's the
same as them. There's a different called artill be fine. Yeah,
so that's yeah, maybe there are there's a there's I
think they tend to have similar shapes underneath them, but
then the lyric material shifts them around.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
How much freedom do you get when you're creating a
song for a movie or a soundtrack and things. Do
you get a very specific brief or are you just
sort of allowed to be quite creative?
Speaker 6 (39:30):
It depends.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
Often For a film, I get given a script and
it has a little line, you know, Unicorn sings a
song about wanting to move to the city, and so
then I write a song about that. But then the
Minecraft movie was was very specific. That's the most specific
song I've had where they needed a song for a
(39:52):
fight scene at a certain tempo to match holding out
for a hero. That song that originally cut in, but
they didn't want to use. They wanted sixteenth note high hats,
that kind of you know y sound, and they didn't
want too many sounds that were in the frequency of
punches and swords clashing because it was a battle sequence.
(40:14):
So yeah, and with a theme about being a hero.
That was the brief for that song. And then they
said it was Friday, and they said, could you do
it by Monday? So yeah, I write the song and
it ended up being used and we got Benny to
sing it, and yeah, it came out. I actually didn't
think it came out really great, But that was very
very specific parameters.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
So when it comes to writing your own album like
Freakut City, is that a bit of a relief that
you've got the ability to kind of have creative freedom
and be in controlled and do exactly what you want.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Yeah, I think that's what I find attractive about it,
to be honest, as having done so many jobs songs
to prescription. I think I was enjoying writing songs that
are much more open and free and anything can happen
in them. So yeah, that's definitely part of why I'm
sort of writing this new music.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
Britt.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
I know that you go between l A and Wellington
quite a lot, but you're mostly based in Wellington these days,
you can you can do the job from there.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
Post COVID. A lot of work is on zoom anyway.
A couple of times I've flown to Los Angeles and
gone to the meeting and it's the meetings on Zoom.
Speaker 6 (41:25):
It's quite frustrating, by the way.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
Yeah, and it was pretty ridiculous. But yeah, I do
travel quite a bit. You can tell you travel quite
a bit when the staff on the airplane no you.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
There might be other reasons though, to be.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
Honest, but they're like, hey, good to see you again. Yeah,
you're more like all like the people on the bus
that you know, you know from just commuting with those
that many times.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
I heard you say recently that you thought of a
flight of the Concord re union with Jermaine, but you
sort of see the two of you as old men.
Is that?
Speaker 6 (42:06):
Yeah, Well, I was I think with something in that.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
I was thinking that, you know, stand up is a
really glorious like comedy is a really fun activity, not
actially a fun gig. When you're in your twenties and thirties,
you travel around the world, you get to be out
in comedy clubs and you get to meet lots of people,
and it's really fun. But as you hit when you
(42:30):
have kids and you get a little bit older, it
gets a bit weird because you're not really going out
in the same way and you I've got friends who
still tour doing stand up and suddenly it, for some
read it clicks over into like a traveling salesman type
gig at some point, and it's a bit awkward, I think,
having forty year old's fifty ye old singing about too
(42:51):
many dicks on the dance floor. But I have a
feeling it's going to be really great when we're like
in our sixties, a couple of old gray dudes singing
it about us. They're being singing about our sugar loves.
I reckon that's going to be much funnier.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
I love it.
Speaker 5 (43:12):
Now.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Look just before you go tell me that there's a
tour coming.
Speaker 6 (43:15):
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to tour this record. We're just
booking dates.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
I think it's going to be late summer, just for
Ani some time the schedule to get around the country.
I love touring around New Zealand. It's so fun. We
went to when we toured the last record was with
the New Zealand Band and the whole band on the
road and we went through Murchison and we found this
little junk shop there and bought lots of trinkets, some
egg cup holders and salt and pepper shakers and sold
(43:40):
them as merch around the country.
Speaker 6 (43:42):
Super fun.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I love it. Thank you so much for the album.
Absolutely loving freak Out City. Good luck with the horses,
and look forward to seeing you on tour at some point.
Speaker 6 (43:51):
Yeah yeah, once I get rid of the horses, I'll
be on the road. I'll get back on the road.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
The best guest from the Sunday session Great Jazz with
Francesca Rudge on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I'd be That was Brett Mackenzie. If you need a
pack up, I seriously recommend the album. It's called freak
Out City. How funny was he about the race horses?
Thanks for joining me on this News Talks He'd Be podcast.
Please feel free to share these chats, and if you
like the podcast, make sure you follow us on iHeartRadio
or wherever you get your podcasts. Don't forget that we
(44:24):
release a new episode of Great Chats on the last
Thursday of every month.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to news Talks It'd Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB. The big names, the fascinating guests,
the thoughtful conversations, bringing you the best interviews from the
Sunday Session. This is Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin, empowered
(00:27):
by News Talks AEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hello and welcome to Great Chats. I'm Francesca Rudkin, host
of the Sunday Session on News Talks EDB, and in
this podcast we pick some of our favorite feature interviews
from over the last month for you to enjoy. Coming up,
Doctor Rachel Clark talks about the unique field of organ
donation and Brett Mackenzie on his fabulous new album freak
Out City. But first up today an interview that struck
(00:49):
a chord with many of our listeners. Doctor Temorte ti
Moque's story is extraordinary. He went from being abused as
a child to committing crime and ultimately becoming a gang member,
but through rehabit education, he became a paramedic and graduated
medical school at the age of fifty six. Started by
asking him why he decided to share his story in
(01:10):
his new book, The Unlikely Doctor.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Basically like my life has been quite unique, unique in
terms of me having the ability to not only write
a book, but to excel to where I am at
the moment. And there are a lot of people that
could be where I am, but now, due to the
barriers that that society have put in place, they are
(01:33):
not able to do this. And so essentially what my
book is looking at is the potential that this country
could have if we realize that these are the barriers
in place, and how we need to mend them in
order to allow this country every just potential.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
At the very beginning of the book, you talk about
how you like to where you know, you bust to
and from work at Middlemall Hospital, and you like to
wear your doctor scrubs and you keep your idea on
you that you know calls you a doctor and things
purely so that other kids can say, oh, look, this
is a mar doctor.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Absolutely. I stay South Aukland, I stay in public tooid
and there's not many Marty doctors or Pacifica doctors. And
so what I need to do is I need to
show that that martin Pacifica can be doctors. You know,
they need to see a brown skin doctor out there
walking around, and then it needs to happen often, and
it needs to happen in such a way that people
(02:26):
become normalized to it and go, yeah, that's that's just
what we do out in South Auckland. And there's a
partner book where I talk about uh traffic lights up
by Hunter's Corner shopping center and I'm waiting across and
across the road as a young boy and he must
have been about eight years old or something, and he's
standing next to his bike and he's and he's waiting
(02:46):
across yet and I'm looking across him and he's staring
at me, and he's checking me out, man, and I'm
thinking a yeah. And then the walk sign gaze and
we cross crossing pass and and he looks up at
me and guess I guess hey bro, and I get
hey Roy, And he was beaming in that and and
it was the experience last maybe a second, two seconds,
(03:06):
and then he walks on his way in. And that's
what I want, because in a second I realized that
if I was wearing a gang patch, he would have
done exactly the same. This is because this young boy
is looking for something to aspire to and like he's
more likely to see a gang patch than a Marti doctor,
(03:29):
and so what needs to happen and needs to be normalized.
So he sees that all the time, and it's reinforcing
his mind. And so by the time he turns forteen
fifteen sixteen, he thinks, you know what, might become a doctor,
or you know what, I might become a loyal and
you know what, I might become an engineer, And he
doesn't have any of that psychological barrier. Rather than him
(03:49):
turning fifteen sixteen game, you know what, I want to
be a gangster, because that's all he's grown up with.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Can we talk about you at fifteen or sixteen? It
was quite a childhood. Maybe just tell me a little
bit at first about your childhood.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
My childhood. Yeah, well, I'm part Marty tongue and I've
never known my dad because they separated before I was born.
My mom and dad separated for I was born. All
I know about him was that he liked to drink
and he liked to hurt people. But then my mom,
she was up here in Tamiki working and she came
down to where my grandparents were in Matata, and she
(04:25):
had me Intani hospital. Now, the thing is she was
at the stage of her life where she wasn't She
didn't want to be a mom, so she gave me
to my grandparents. It's called fin line and it's quite
common in Marty cultures. So I was finally to my
caudle and I was given his name. So I was
born Timothy up at Halma, Timwok, and I lived with
him for the first six years of my life and
(04:46):
it was amazing. Like I it was beautiful. We were
very poor, but still I wanted for nothing, and I
was in a loving home, very supportive culturally where they
spoke Marty yeah, and it was good. And they come
up here to Tamiki and I was around all my
cousins and that I was beautiful. Then by the time
I turned six, my mom decided she wanted me back.
(05:07):
And by this time she had married this guy with
the name of Morrison. But because I was born tim Mouk,
I was legally my grandfather's child. So my mom did
is she took my court to the court. I said
this guy she had married, Morrison, she had married was
my actual dad and stuck his name on the birth certificate.
Then I went from Timothy tem Mok to Tim Morrison,
(05:29):
and they uplifted me. And they were dysfunctional people that
were dysfunctional as hell, and life took a real hard
turn for me. My stepfather hated me. Every time he
saw me saw another man. He just couldn't take it.
I'd be I remember, I'm eight years old and I'm
in my room and I'm shaking like her because I
(05:50):
hear his car rolling up into the carpboard, and I
know what's going to happen. You get off out of
the car and off his face and just walk into
my room, pulled me out of bed, and just slammed
a living and crap out of me and then just
leave me this buddy mess on the floor, go sex
with my mom and got us. And sometimes this is
what happened to me maybe three times a week. Eight
(06:11):
years old, and that happened to me three times a week,
you know. So by the time I turned fourteen, man,
I'm broken. I am broken, man. But here's the thing.
I grew up in an area where I wasn't the
only kid that that was happening to. What that allowed
me to do was allowed me to hang out with
kids that were similar to me. We never talked about it,
(06:31):
but somehow we just were so connected and it was
because of that stuff, even though we didn't talk about it.
And by that time, I'm broken. I'm not going to
school anymore, and I start getting into trouble. I had
my first official charge for attempted burglary affording ended up
in oy Ka boys home. Fortunately enough, I am. I
(06:56):
don't know how it worked, but my English teacher found
out and I went to stay with them for a year.
Beautiful family, beautiful family, but I'm broken, and so I
don't know how to engage with it. I don't know how.
I don't know what it is, you know, And so
it doesn't matter how much love and attention they gave
me and how much support. I didn't know how to
(07:18):
utilize that. I'm broken.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
It's really interesting because I think that that pops up
throughout your life. There, you know, there are moments where
you do get yourself together, and if I skip forward
a little bit, you end up in Australia and you
go to rehab and you get clean, and actually you
end up with your own security business and life is
going well. But interestingly, if the wrong person came into
your life, where if things got a bit wobbly. Yeah,
(07:40):
everything would fall over again, wouldn't it. And I mean
it's so I suppose my question to you is, and
I look at you, you know now, I think you
were fifty six when you graduated as it a doctor,
which is and it's a phenomenal story as to how
you got there's so much in between. But how important
is it to deal with that kind of trauma that,
of course you do not understand or able to process
(08:03):
when you're a young man.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
That's a good question. And and the thing was, I
got married and I got divorced, and I just everything
hit the skids. But what had happened is like from
from right back at the beginning till then I was evolving,
And in the rehab was the first time ever I
learned about the things underneath that that that were happening
(08:29):
and the reasons behind the reasons why I was doing stuff.
And so I was starting to understand that. And I
think if I hadn't gone there and I had rocked
by them again, things would have been a lot different
from me. And and that's how it is through all
my life, like I've been able to utilize tools that
I got at that time to to to help me
(08:51):
manage for the future. Yeah, going back, like I were
hanging out with those kids, I utilized the tools that
I got because I needed them for when I went
to prison, and I lentized and I got tools in
there they utilized for when I got out of prison,
and I utilize those tools that I found there when
I got to Australia, and then I utilized those tools
(09:12):
that hone. There's those tools to to go okay, carry on,
and and it just kept going from there.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
At no point, you know, when you're going through your
teenage years, you're in a lot of trouble and you
end up at a you know, sort of corrective training,
you end up in a boot camp, you end up
in Mount eat in prison. All this kIPS you know,
this is kind of a bit of a regular occurrence
for you. At any point, did anyone look at you
as a vulnerable child or a victim, you know, especially
(09:41):
when you were younger as well, when you started, you know,
you're a bright kid, You're at school and all of
a sudden, you're not.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Going my grandparents and the school teachers and her family.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
So some people did try.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Some people did try, but like I said, by the
time they got around to it, especially my school teacher
and her family, it was too late, mate, Like, you
can't you can't just go and turn off a tap.
It's not a tap. Yeah, and you can't turn it
off and get okay, from now on, we'll put a
wash on it, we'll fix it and now to be fine. Yeah, yeah, no,
(10:17):
it doesn't work like that, and so so because of that,
I had to evolve through it, and I think it
came down on a large part to come down to
the first six years I spent with my grandparents and
I was born, you know, without an e I was
born quite a smart kid, and with that intelligent intelligence,
(10:41):
I was able to kind of not only negotiate my
way through stuff, but also be able to step back
and work out how things what things need to happen
at that time.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, I mentioned that you ended up in corrective training.
You went on it's sort of what we now would
call a boot camp. But you've got quite an interesting
perspective on what that can create, and of course the
government has reintroduced them now. I thought this was quite interesting.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Absolutely, like they've brought in the boot camps and yeah,
that that is not going to work. It's actually going
to be it's actually going to make things a hell
of a lot worse. And you can guarantee this. Like
I did boot Camp, I came out fit, I came
out disciplined, I came out angry. Now the only thing
(11:30):
that was missing that that I didn't have is someone
out here, like a leader with foresight and resources that
could have honed those tools into something that was effective
for that group. And the thing is today they do
have groups with charismatic leaders that do have resources. And
(11:53):
now what this government is are attempting to do is
they're attempting to do exactly what they did to me.
Put these guys in there and release them back out
into the community that are angry, that are fit, that
are disciplined and can take orders.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah, and you make the point, that's going to make
them really good productive gang members.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
They're going to be like they each each group, each
each different gang, will have their own little individual elite
force within it, and it'll be made up of these
these people. And and the thing is that that they
these clubs now have resources to invest in that to
(12:33):
actually hone them and perfect them into a into a
focus and that's the thing that I missed, and which
is fortunate for me, but also very fortunate for this
country because when I did end up in Australia and
I did end up with charismatic leaders with resources, I excelled. Yeah,
and I became one of the top ranking people in
(12:54):
those kind of clubs. And so so the thing is
that now here the government thinks, oh, yeah, well we'll
just do this and and and and we'll show that
we're tough on crime. Their idiots, mate.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
You don't think the gang problem's going to go away never.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
This is because gangs they reflect where society is failing. Yeah,
they mirror society's fails.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
And so the if you want to the marsh gangs,
you have to demolister the drivers the same as crime.
You can't be tough on crime. You got to you
gotta take care of the drivers of crime and so
so so that you've got to take care of the
drivers of people becoming gangsters. You need more Mardy doctors,
(13:43):
you need more Marty lawyers, you need more Mardy engineers,
you need more brown skinned people walking around In South Auckland,
they have scrubs on rather than gang patches. That's what
you need.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
That teacher that you had at school always instilled in
you the importance thinglish teach, the importance of education, and
later on you you did educate yourself. You study acupuncture,
you became a paramedic, and then you ended up at
medical school. Has your life experience made you a better doctor?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
One dred percent and h It's made me so much
more have the ability to engage with people on different
levels and also engage with people in a way that
no other doctor.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Kemp the biggest names from the Sunday session Great Chats
with Franchesca Rudkin on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
At B That was doctor demlte to make a truly
inspirational story, right. I know that many of you have
read the book. Quite a few of you have even
touched base with me and suggested that we interview him.
So clearly a lot of interest, so I really wanted
to put this at the beginning of the podcast for you.
The book is called The Unlikely Doctor. Up next another doctor.
(15:02):
Her name is doctor Rachel Clark. She's a palliative care
doctor with the NHS in the UK. Her latest book,
The Story of a Heart at Won the twenty twenty
five Women's Prize for Nonfiction, and it tells the story
of organ donation, and it centers on the stories of
nine year olds Max and Kira. It's a book about innovation,
(15:23):
grief and hope, and it quite literally reduced me to tears.
So we began this conversation by talking about why Rachel
wanted to write about organ donation.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
All the way back to medical school, I was completely
captivated by organ donation, even though I didn't become a surgeon,
let alone a transplant said in myself, I just thought
this idea that we are capable, thanks to medical science,
of removing a warm, living organ from somebody who has
(15:59):
usually very tragically perished, but then we can send it,
sometimes one hundreds thousands of miles away to another hospital
and save the life of another adult or child, completely astonishing.
I think that organ donation is just a triumph really
of medical science, and I was always fascinated. I witnessed
(16:26):
some organ surgeries during my training, and then I came
across the story of little Max and Kira when I
had much later specialized in palliative medicine, my specialty, that
their story just stopped me in my tracks.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
It is an incredible story and it's a it's a
fantastic way actually to write a book around organ donation,
right to because there's more to the book than just
this story. We get a lot of medical history and
things and I'll get to there a little bit later.
But and I hate to use the pump, but they
are at the heart of the story. So can you
tell me a little bit about Mex and Kira?
Speaker 5 (17:05):
Yes. So, in the UK a few years ago, in
twenty seventeen, there was a big campaign to change the
law around organ donation to an opt out system, so
it's assumed that you would be happy to consent all
the donation unless you've said otherwise. And a little boy, Max,
(17:29):
who was nine years old, became one of the children
whose face one day appeared on the front of a
British newspaper as part of that campaign. He had been
waiting for a heart transplant for many, many months. He
was desperately ill, and almost at any moment he was
(17:50):
sick enough to die, and his mum agreed to tell
his story in public in the hope that it would
help change the law and also maybe people would think
about children and adults slight Max and have the conversation
with their loved ones about donation. So I came across
(18:13):
this story when Max's face appeared on the front page
of a newspaper that I happened to read. He looked
desperately ill. Then a few months later his face appeared again,
and now it was rosy cheeked and brimming with health
because luckily, at the eleventh hour he had received a transplant.
And then a few months after that, the extraordinary thing happened.
(18:37):
One day, two families appeared on the front page of
the Mirror newspaper, and Kiira, the little girl who had
tragically died in a car crash and whose heart saved
Max's life. Her mum had worked out from the publicity
that her heart had probably saved Max, and she got
(18:57):
in touch with Max's mum and sent her a message
via social media saying, I think your little boy has
our daughter's heart and it's the most beautiful heart in
the world. And the two mums started communicating, and that
culminated in both families meeting in person, and one by one,
Kira's mom, dad, and siblings all lined up and listen
(19:22):
to her heart with a stethoscope beating inside the chest
of the little boy whose life she'd saved. And when
I read that story, I couldn't think about anything else.
I knew it was one of the most extraordinary stories
I'd ever hear, and that gave me the idea as
a writer to write a book about this extraordinary journey
(19:44):
of Kira's heart. That would be a way of telling
this wonderful, wider story about the medical miracle that is transplantation.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Kira's family and Kira are quite extraordinary people. They make
the selfless decision at the worst possible moment in their lives.
How do humans find the capacity to deal with the
question of a loved one becoming an organ doner.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
So it is I think the most extraordinary aspect of
this story, and indeed every successful trans story at the
center is a family going through the most unimaginable grief devastation.
Often there is a sudden accident, like a car accident,
and this family is having to come to terms with
(20:32):
the fact that someone they love so desperately maybe appears
to simply be sleeping, but because of brain injuries, their
brain has died. They can no longer live, and it
is remarkable how in those times of utter darkness people
have a capacity to draw upon reserves of resilience and
(20:56):
generosity and sheer radical altruism that they might not even
have known they had. And that's exactly what Kira's family did.
So I interviewed both families and all the medical staff
involved in this story, and incredibly, nobody even brought up
organ donation with Kira's family. Her sister, a little girl
(21:20):
who was only eleven years old at the time, called Caitlin,
turned to the intensive care doctor and said, can we
donate Kira's organs? And the doctor said she had never
ever encountered a child asking that question before, so she
was taken aback, but she said, yes, of course, if
that's what you want. And then little Caitlin turned to
(21:42):
her dad and said, Dad, we have to do this.
Kira is such a kind girl, she's so loving. I
know it's what she would want. And Kira's dad, Joe, said, yes,
you are totally right, we must do this. And I
just think that's a in a way, that's an emblem
and microcosm of everything that people are capable of. We
(22:05):
often hear bad news stories. There is so much violence wars,
worrying stories around the globe. But fundamentally, people can be
and are extraordinary, and very often when they're in the
darkest circumstances themselves.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
For the recipient, this relief that you know, maybe the
only option leaf to save their life is possible as
going a heat, but it comes with their guilt of
knowing that someone else has died and that other people
are suffering. It's tough, isn't it.
Speaker 5 (22:40):
It's really tough, and Max, although he was only nine
years old, he understood this terrible arithmetic of organ donation.
For him to live, someone else would have to die.
And no recipient, and no recipient family ever wants a
(23:02):
tragedy to happen to another child, another adult. All they
hope is that if a tragedy happens, that family might
consider this act of altruism because it's the only way
their loved one can live. And Kia is a beautiful
example of that. There were two children and two adults
whose lives were saved thanks to Kia and the generosity
(23:24):
of her family, and now every single day her father
Joe told me he thinks of Kia and he thinks
of what a kind, gorgeous girl she was, and how
proud he is of her because she has that living legacy.
So sometimes, although this is a story that involves heartbreak,
(23:47):
organ donation can give families a huge amount of comfort.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
In a Mexa's case, it was an end for his family.
It wasn't just the relief of getting the hat. You
then have to get your heir around what is going
to happen, which is actually that surgeons are going to
cut out mex Has hat, which is tend to amount
to him dying in place a new one and and
(24:13):
hope that it works. I mean, there is also a
lot for a patient to get the hit around, doesn't.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
It, Absolutely so, I think, And actually it's a lot
for the surgeons as well. So I interviewed maxis surgeons
and everybody Max his family has surgeons. They all talked
about the enormity of the surgery. If you think about
it objectively, it almost sounds like science fiction. So so,
(24:42):
first of all, the a major artery and a major
vein in Max's body was connected to a bypass machine
that oxygenated his blood outside the body. And these machines
they look like science fiction. There are kind of mass
(25:03):
of wires and tubes. It's extraordinary. And then you have
to literally saw the breastbone in half and manually pull
the rips apart. And then of course you have to
remove the heart. And there is this surgeon are staring
(25:25):
at an empty chest. There is nothing there where the
heart should be. And to all intents and purposes, unless
you successfully stitch the new heart in, you have killed
the child. So everything rests on your skill and your
fingers and all your surgical training, and you have to
keep an utterly cool head under pressure and perform this
(25:48):
vital surgery. And of course that's exactly what successfully happened
in Max's case. But he was very, very frightened before
the surgery, and his family were absolutely terrified, you know,
on ten to hooks, just waiting hour by hour by
hour hoping the new would be good. And in the
(26:08):
old days, heart transplants were a real lottery, more many
more people died than lived. But today, because the surgeons
are so skilled, the vast majority of people do survive.
At least they certainly survive the surgery itself. But you
always have to worry about rejection of the organ. You
(26:30):
take very very strong and unosuppressant drugs for the rest
of your life. And thankfully Matts has thrived and today
he is this strapping, healthy, six foot to sixteen year
old boy. He's just done his big exams in the
UK GCSE exams and he's looking forward to probably going
(26:52):
to college. And all of this is thanks to Kira
and her family.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
We learn a lot about the history of transplants in
the book, which I found really fascinating. But also it
hadn't really occurred to me that there had to be
so many medical advancements before trains plants were even possible.
You talk about the creation of the ICU or bypass
all these things, Rachel, it's beastnitting.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
Yes, And that was an aspect of writing a book
that I love, delving deeply into the history because always
with medicine, once a breakthrough happens very very quickly, we
take it for granted. So if you think of the
COVID nineteen pandemic, the thing that was frightening was the
(27:36):
idea that there might not be enough ventilators for everybody
with COVID who needed them.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
None of us thought for a.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
Second about the fact that ventilators have only been in
existence since the nineteen fifties, and one of the stories
I tell in the book is about the invention of
ventilators and of intensive care units, and they all originated
from the polio pandemics and epidemics that we used to
(28:04):
have before vaccination, and the extraordinary courage really of an
individual doctor in Copenhagen in Denmark who was faced with
a little child in front of him, a little girl
who couldn't breathe because polio had panglanized her muscles and breathing,
(28:25):
and he decided to manually squeeze air into her lungs.
And then all of the medical students in Copenhagen, hundreds
hundreds of them, were enlisted to manually squeezees, bag and
mask ventilate it's called squeeze oxygen in and out of
(28:47):
these poor children who are paralyzed with polio until they recovered.
And that is what led to the ventilators and the
intensive care units that today save thousands and thousands of
people the world over. So medicine is filled with these
extraordinary historical stories which we don't think about because we
(29:07):
take the advances as given, we've grown up with them.
We don't see them as remarkable but every one of
these advances has an incredible story behind it.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Rachel, you mentioned the word their courage, and it just
sort of occurred to me that everybody in this book,
that is the one thing they all have in common,
I think is courage, from the nurses, to the surgeons,
to the family members, everybody involved. It kind of sums
up this book beautifully. It is a book full of courage.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
I completely agree with that, because I think courage is
not necessarily choosing to face something that frightens you. Courage
is finding yourself in a situation where you have no
choice and the only thing you can choose is how
to respond.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Bringing you the best interviews from the Sunday Session Great
Chats with Francesca Rudkin on iHeartRadio and powered by News
Talks it Be.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
That was doctor Rachel Clark. The book is called The
Story of a Heart Look. I found it really fascinating.
I was really interested in the medical advancements that it
had to happen for organ donation to happen, and just
the general history of organ donation.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
But I'm not gonna lie. You will need to read.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
This book with a box of tissues by your side.
I was sobbed all the way through it. It's a
beautiful story, but it's pretty moving. Right to finish up, today,
I am joined by the fabulous Brett Mackenzie to talk
about his new album, Freak Out City, and we're also
going to talk about writing music for movies and inheriting.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
Fifty race horses. Now that's a story.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
I started by asking him about the first single off
the album. It's called All I Need, which he wrote
for his wife.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
It's a love song for Hannah. And we've been together
a long time. We got together when we're in our
twenties and well twenty I think, and exactly, and so you.
Speaker 6 (31:03):
Do the math. But I'm forty nine.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
And yeah, it's funny when you've been in a relationship
that long. You've got to be honest. There are some
days you love each other more than other days. And
this song one of those, you know, one of those
days when things are going great. I sat down the
piano and came up with this song. So it's a
sweet love song.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Can you tell me how some advice from the Beatles?
How would you write the verse?
Speaker 6 (31:31):
Yes, yeah, good question. I wrote the chorus.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
And sometimes songs they pop into your head and you
get a piece of them, and then parts of them
are left and you're not sure what to do with them.
And around the time when I was writing the song,
I watched that Peter Jackson made that documentary about the Beatles,
and I don't know if you've seen that, about eight
hours eighty hours of hanging out with the Beatles, and
there's one scene where George Harrison is working on a
(31:54):
song and it's actually the chords to something in the Worshimers,
you know, but he didn't have the lyrics and he
said to John, you know, I just don't know what
the lyric should in John, and goes just sing pomegranate
and the lyrics will come. And I was like, that's
so good, because like being a songwriter, watching the Beatles
(32:15):
write songs is like a masterclass. And so it was like,
oh my god, that's so great. So for a whole
tour we toured. I toured the first first album and
I sang the song live and I just sang pomegranate
in the verse, just sort of made up blur and
I had a.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
Few lines and then just rhymed them with pomegranate.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
And Yeah, eventually it took me a couple of years,
but I replaced those.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
It was worth spending all those hours watching that documentary
just for that little chestnut's song writing was absolutely I don't.
Speaker 6 (32:43):
Know if you saw it.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
There was another one where you watch Paul McCartney and
you see the desperation that he's got to They've got
to come up with some songs. They've promised an album
and you see him just hitting the bass, rocking out
this beat and just forcing lyrics out of his mouth.
Speaker 6 (32:57):
That's great to watch.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Other than Hannah, what's the inspiration behind this album?
Speaker 4 (33:03):
I think the inspiration behind the album is kind of
a seventies live energy.
Speaker 6 (33:10):
I wanted a.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
Record that felt like a group of people in a
room playing together. I've got this amazing band of New
Zealand musicians and when we play there's a lot of
there's a lot of life and musical conversation going on,
and I wanted to capture some of that in a
record in the way that I think nineteen seventies.
Speaker 6 (33:27):
Records really did beautifully.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
And then lyrically, the songs a collection of songs that
I wrote over about a year and at the time,
you don't have a theme, and I didn't have a
real mission about what the album was going to be.
I just collected my favorite songs that came together. But
then when you in retrospect, you look back and you
see there are some threads of optimism and hope in
(33:54):
a kind of modern world of fairly disastrous global news
and events. And there's one song in particular, Eyes on
the Sun, which I think really captures that which is
is about. I had a friend who was just getting
so down about social division and climate change, and I
(34:17):
could see that it was breaking her, and I thought, gee,
you've also got to You've got to bring it's not
helping you thinking about these things, and you're not changing
them by thinking about them, So it's bringing their optimism
in amongst it.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
It is a wonderful time to be releasing this album.
I do feel like we needed it. It's just warm,
it's upbeat, but lyrically pertinent. You know. I think what
you've just said there makes a huge amount of sense
from the experience that I had listening to it. Eight
piece band worked on this album with you. That's quite big.
Is that quite a bit of coordinating.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
The eight piece band is not something I would advise
you start like the amount of texts and emails to
coordinate a very simple like practice is pretty hilarious.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah, this album has been in the work for a while.
It was delayed somewhat as you looked after your father
in twenty twenty three and he sadly passed away. And
I know he was a huge fan of your work
and an inspiration to you, breet, wasn't he?
Speaker 4 (35:14):
Yeah, very much, so, big fan, big supporter. Really loved songs,
and he really loved melodies that kind of that. He
loves a lot of nineteen sixties music and the melodies
are really strong, and a lot of that music, he
loved it. When you could understand the lyrics. He got
(35:35):
very angry with rock music or you couldn't hear the lyrics.
But yeah, big fan, And yeah, I sort of lost
a year there. He got brain cancer and it was
quite fast actually, and so it was in some ways
it was pretty lucky, but we lost about there was
I feel like twenty twenty three is a bit of
(35:57):
a blur.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, is it true when he passed you inherited fifty
race horses.
Speaker 6 (36:02):
Yeah, good research.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
Yeah, so my dad it's a horse trainer, and my
mum is a ballet teacher, dance dance company. Really mixed
mixed bag and yeah. When dad passed away, me and
my two brothers inherited his farm, which had fifty race horses,
twenty cattle, and about fifty forty sheep. And none of
(36:28):
us are farm people. My brothers work in hospitality and
it and I do show business. And so we found
ourselves on the farm trying to fix troughs. And I
was trying to get the four wheel drive and not
even a four wheel drive. This is how much farming
knowledge I have. The quad bike, that's what we call it.
I was trying to get the quad bike going and
(36:49):
I had to YouTube a video how to get it
into reverse because I couldn't get it out of the shed.
Speaker 6 (36:54):
So yeah, yeah, one of my dad times.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
Yeah, my dad's friend said to him in hospital, He's like,
don't you like your children?
Speaker 6 (37:01):
Don't you like your sons? He's like, why, because you're
leaving them fifty horses. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:06):
Anyway, we've given away a lot of horses and I've
got a few left.
Speaker 6 (37:11):
If anyone wants a race horse, let me know.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Oh my goodness, what a story. Brit songwriting is your
main gig? Now, not just for your own albums, but
of course you've been writing for movies for a while. Now,
what's the balance.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
I spend most of my time now, particularly the last
few years, writing songs for films. That's my main job.
I'd say I wrote a few songs for the Minecraft movie.
Speaker 6 (37:35):
That, and they come along. I kind of love.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
Them because they're not They don't take too long, so
you focus on them for a few weeks and then
you kind of move on. They don't whereas film scripts.
I've written some film scripts, and they really take a
year or eighteen months. And there's something quite fun about
songs is that I can you can do one and
then I can go to my kids' school camp and
(38:02):
I can and then I can do another song and
then do other things around them. It's much more Yeah,
a much more balanced kind of life.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Yeah, this might be an odd question for someone who
does this for a living, but are there only so
many songs to go around?
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Like?
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Is it quite hard to find this space as well
to work on your own music while trying to also
create for other people and then needs.
Speaker 6 (38:30):
Yeah, it's funny you said that.
Speaker 4 (38:31):
The other day I was working on a song a
demo for a new animated movie, and.
Speaker 6 (38:36):
I've done quite a lot of work on it.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
I've got the demo ap I was recording it and
doing some vocals and I was playing to keep a
player from my band, Leo. He was doing some keys
on it, and then I paused and went, oh, this
is the same as like as a song called heard Feelings,
like a concord song that a just go. So sometimes
you accidentally fall into your own patterns because you kind
(38:59):
of I think songwriters tend to use similar patterns. Yeah,
that was quite funny. I was like, Oh, it's the
same as them. There's a different called artill be fine. Yeah,
so that's yeah, maybe there are there's a there's I
think they tend to have similar shapes underneath them, but
then the lyric material shifts them around.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
How much freedom do you get when you're creating a
song for a movie or a soundtrack and things. Do
you get a very specific brief or are you just
sort of allowed to be quite creative?
Speaker 6 (39:30):
It depends.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
Often For a film, I get given a script and
it has a little line, you know, Unicorn sings a
song about wanting to move to the city, and so
then I write a song about that. But then the
Minecraft movie was was very specific. That's the most specific
song I've had where they needed a song for a
(39:52):
fight scene at a certain tempo to match holding out
for a hero. That song that originally cut in, but
they didn't want to use. They wanted sixteenth note high hats,
that kind of you know y sound, and they didn't
want too many sounds that were in the frequency of
punches and swords clashing because it was a battle sequence.
(40:14):
So yeah, and with a theme about being a hero.
That was the brief for that song. And then they
said it was Friday, and they said, could you do
it by Monday? So yeah, I write the song and
it ended up being used and we got Benny to
sing it, and yeah, it came out. I actually didn't
think it came out really great, But that was very
very specific parameters.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
So when it comes to writing your own album like
Freakut City, is that a bit of a relief that
you've got the ability to kind of have creative freedom
and be in controlled and do exactly what you want.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Yeah, I think that's what I find attractive about it,
to be honest, as having done so many jobs songs
to prescription. I think I was enjoying writing songs that
are much more open and free and anything can happen
in them. So yeah, that's definitely part of why I'm
sort of writing this new music.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
Britt.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
I know that you go between l A and Wellington
quite a lot, but you're mostly based in Wellington these days,
you can you can do the job from there.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
Post COVID. A lot of work is on zoom anyway.
A couple of times I've flown to Los Angeles and
gone to the meeting and it's the meetings on Zoom.
Speaker 6 (41:25):
It's quite frustrating, by the way.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
Yeah, and it was pretty ridiculous. But yeah, I do
travel quite a bit. You can tell you travel quite
a bit when the staff on the airplane no you.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
There might be other reasons though, to be.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
Honest, but they're like, hey, good to see you again. Yeah,
you're more like all like the people on the bus
that you know, you know from just commuting with those
that many times.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
I heard you say recently that you thought of a
flight of the Concord re union with Jermaine, but you
sort of see the two of you as old men.
Is that?
Speaker 6 (42:06):
Yeah, Well, I was I think with something in that.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
I was thinking that, you know, stand up is a
really glorious like comedy is a really fun activity, not
actially a fun gig. When you're in your twenties and thirties,
you travel around the world, you get to be out
in comedy clubs and you get to meet lots of people,
and it's really fun. But as you hit when you
(42:30):
have kids and you get a little bit older, it
gets a bit weird because you're not really going out
in the same way and you I've got friends who
still tour doing stand up and suddenly it, for some
read it clicks over into like a traveling salesman type
gig at some point, and it's a bit awkward, I think,
having forty year old's fifty ye old singing about too
(42:51):
many dicks on the dance floor. But I have a
feeling it's going to be really great when we're like
in our sixties, a couple of old gray dudes singing
it about us. They're being singing about our sugar loves.
I reckon that's going to be much funnier.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
I love it.
Speaker 5 (43:12):
Now.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Look just before you go tell me that there's a
tour coming.
Speaker 6 (43:15):
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to tour this record. We're just
booking dates.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
I think it's going to be late summer, just for
Ani some time the schedule to get around the country.
I love touring around New Zealand. It's so fun. We
went to when we toured the last record was with
the New Zealand Band and the whole band on the
road and we went through Murchison and we found this
little junk shop there and bought lots of trinkets, some
egg cup holders and salt and pepper shakers and sold
(43:40):
them as merch around the country.
Speaker 6 (43:42):
Super fun.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I love it. Thank you so much for the album.
Absolutely loving freak Out City. Good luck with the horses,
and look forward to seeing you on tour at some point.
Speaker 6 (43:51):
Yeah yeah, once I get rid of the horses, I'll
be on the road. I'll get back on the road.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
The best guest from the Sunday session Great Jazz with
Francesca Rudge on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I'd be That was Brett Mackenzie. If you need a
pack up, I seriously recommend the album. It's called freak
Out City. How funny was he about the race horses?
Thanks for joining me on this News Talks He'd Be podcast.
Please feel free to share these chats, and if you
like the podcast, make sure you follow us on iHeartRadio
or wherever you get your podcasts. Don't forget that we
(44:24):
release a new episode of Great Chats on the last
Thursday of every month.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to news Talks It'd Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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