End Times: The Question of Hope Pukapuka Talks session at the 2023 Nelson Arts Festival

Rebecca Priestley discusses her new book, End Times, which is part memoir/part road trip exploring climate science, climate denial and belief systems, with Jude Watson.

What do the Christian right, natural health practitioners and farmers have in common? Rebecca Priestley examines this question and more in End Times, a work of creative nonfiction that interweaves two stories. In one, Priestley explores two of her teenage years, when in the late 1980s she and her best friend Maz became born-again Christians. Evangelists were preaching about the end times, convinced that the Pope was the Antichrist and the EFT-POS cards were the beginning of the 666 system.

This often dramatic experience is countered with a contemporary journey – a 2021 road trip with the same friend – to the West Coast, a part of New Zealand where the then mayor was a climate change denier, locals distrusted the Covid-19 vaccine, there were looming threats of both sea level rise and a statistically overdue massive earthquake, and conspiracy theories abounded. In the book, Priestley interrogates fake news, disinformation, conspiracy theories, science and why people believe what they believe.