Full Show Podcast: 08 June 2025

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. Welcome to the Sunday Session with
Francesca Rudkin and Wiggles for the best selection of great
reads used Talks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Good morning and welcome. I'm Francesca Rudkin, with you until midday.
I hope you survived the short week. Short weeks always
sound like a great idea, don't I until you realize
you've got to fit the same amount of work into
the week. Look where we made it right. Service La
is returning to New Zealand or October with their show
Quittillo After ten. I'm joined by its artistic director, all
Off Trueball Now isn't just the artistic director many years

(00:52):
he was one of their performers. He's a hand balancer.
We're going to talk about what it takes to be
a performer in these shows and why Circus still going
strong after forty years. Now it might meet winter is
not your season and the idea of getting after the
South of France sounds like a dream right now than
Annabel Langbeine's latest adventure might make you a little jealous.

(01:13):
Annabel has spent years searching for the perfect bolt hoole
in France to be closer to her children in Europe.
She's finally founded a gorgeous farmhouse near Bergerac in the
southwest of France. But just how easy is it to
buy a property in France and what's the reality of
living in different places for half of the year. She
is with us after in even to share her story,

(01:34):
and as always, you're most welcome to text me anytime
throughout the morning. On ninety two, ninety.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Two, the Sunday Session.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Okay, two things have entertained me. This week. We've had
the falling out of two of the world's most powerful
and wealthy narcissists, all of which played out on their
own social media platforms. This breakup must be the most
predicted thing to come out of Trump's presidency so far.
After the drama of Thursday's outbursts, there seems to be
a little bit of a descalation between President Trump and

(02:03):
his former benefactor and DOGE leader Enon Musk. Maybe they
each realize they're unlikely to win outright with the other
having a platform to keep the jabs coming, or maybe
a little more strategic thought is going into next moves,
although I'm not sure how much lower the blows could
have gone. But look, if you're looking for alternative entertainment

(02:26):
this weekend, I can recommend Netflix's The Survivors. The Ossie
series is based on Jane Harper on a Jane Harper
novel set in Tasmani, and it tells a story of
how present day death in a coastal town brings back
difficult memories of a fifteen year old tragedy when three
young people died at sea. It's a crime drama filled
with small town secrets, buried drama and grief. And at

(02:49):
the heart of this film, giving another acting masterclass, is
our very own key we legend, Robin Malcolm. Look, every
time I see Malcolm in a new role these days,
I say, oh, it's her best performance yet. She is
at the top of her game. But it occurred to
me this weekend. She's always been at the top of
her game, whether on Shortland Street, Outrageous Fortune, Jane Campion's

(03:11):
Top of the Lake, or Ossie Comedy's Rake or Upper
Middle Bogan. But there's no doubt Malcolm just keeps getting better.
While many other actors discuss the difficulty of getting work
once a woman hits a certain age. Malcolm reminds us
that the middle years can be the glory years, that
a life of experience and hard work can lead to
roles of a lifetime. Recent performances and After the Party,

(03:35):
Pike River and The Survivors are given writers a reason
to write wonderfully layered, messed up characters for women like
Malcolm to play. And if you look at Robin's resume,
you'd think that she'd been employed consistently since walking out
of drama school in nineteen eighty seven. But I know
it hasn't always been easy. Being an actor is not
an easy life, no matter how damn good you are

(03:56):
at it. But watching Malcolm, along with Diane Taylor, pick
up a pen and create a project for herself, the
baft DE nominated After the Party, proves he can be
middle aged, relevant, celebra and seen if you want to be.
It's hard to take your eyes off her in The Survivor,
but just wait until you see her in Rob Psyke's
new film Pike River, which has been released in New

(04:18):
Zealand in October. Yep, you guessed it her best work
yet Seriously, she is spectacular as Sonya Rockhouse. There is
no doubt twenty twenty five is going to be a
great year for Malcolm, and I'm sure it's just the
beginning of an amazing third act.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
The Sunday Session, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Have you got a favorite performance of Robin Malcolm's. Sheryl
West has always been a favorite for people, hasn't she? Anyway?
It is very cool to see her career continue to blossom,
and I should say the impressive Minearmas Smith also has
a role in The Survivor's another key we actress in demand,
which is great to see now. Last night, Pike River
had its world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival. Director

(05:00):
Robert Psark's is with me later this hour to talk
about how the film was received and what drove him
to most Welcome to Text Anytime ninety two ninety two.
It is eleven past nine years. News Talks eb.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
All Sunday with Style The Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin
and Winkles for the best selection of Greg Reeds News
Talk Sevvy.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
It texts here reads I loved her An Agent Anna.
I forgot about Agent Anna.

Speaker 4 (05:28):
Now.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
That was another TV show that Robin Malcolm also devised herself.
He said, this is a thing you can learn what
from these actors. You can't sit around waiting for the
work to come to you. You've got to create it yourself,
don't you.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
Right.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
A group of South Island boys schools uniting to tackle
the modern challenges facing boys. The group includes thirteen schools
from Nelson right through it in the Cargo, and they're
hoping the union will improve the outcomes of young men
and both education and society. One of the schools involved
is Saint Thomas of Canterbury College. Principal Steve Hart is

(05:58):
with me.

Speaker 5 (05:59):
Good morning, Steve, good morning.

Speaker 6 (06:02):
How are you this morning?

Speaker 2 (06:03):
I am very good thinking you've got tuopy on a
Sunday morning and love it.

Speaker 4 (06:08):
Now.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Tell me this banding together has stemmed from a UK
report that you came across. It was called Lost Boys,
State of the Nation. What was it about this report
that concerned you the most?

Speaker 6 (06:19):
Yeah, that that particular report. It's some quite damning statistics
throughout it. But I guess for those of us that
have been involved in boys' education, we've probably identified over
quite a period of time, some of the challenges that
are starting to make themselves a bit more apparent for

(06:40):
young men navigating a modern world. So that particular report
just probably highlighted some of the things that we've probably
seen building over a period of time, and it probably
has just given given us an opportunity to voice some
of those concerns.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
So what are some of those things that you have
been seeing kind of increase over a period of time.

Speaker 6 (07:04):
Yeah, well, I think you lots of things are and
come out as measured outcomes, whether it be through in
a school setting, academic achievements, you know, engagement via attendance,
and then beyond school, you know, whether young men are
going off and to study or employment. All of those

(07:25):
kinds of outcomes are very measurable. But the thing for
me at the center of it all is do our
young men have a sense of identity? Do they understand
where they fit into this world? You know, I think
for all young people, you know, until they truly get
a grantit and it's clearly a journey throughout your life.

(07:46):
But you know, until they really understand who they are
and where they fit in, you know, it can be
quite difficult, you know, getting those really positive outcomes.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
So, Steve, when do you think that changed, or that
it became more of a challenge for young men. Have
you noticed that, I mean, I hate to throw this
out there again, I'm going to you know, social media
that the access to that has that Hedden impact. Do
you think, well, can you put a time frame monit
or has it just been something which you've noticed has

(08:16):
generally kind of changed?

Speaker 6 (08:18):
I think general. I mean if I go back probably
quite a period in time, I think some of the
really early work from Celia Leshley, Yeah, you know in
the book, in the book that she she had researched
and produced, and you know, if I go back to
that time, that was an original collaboration with led by
Boys schools in the South Island, and you know, I
think her work was identified it way back then and

(08:42):
going that's probably going back quite sometimes, you know, And
I think, you know, for us, all it's you know,
how can we collaborate, you know, put all our minds
together so that we can start to help our young
men find their place in this world achieved be really
good members of our society, because I think that's what

(09:05):
we're all wanting. And yeah, you're right with with social media,
I think it gives different groups and people an opportunity
to maybe paint a certain picture that might not be
the reality, you know, and sometimes I think you young
people can be you know, stuck into that a wee.
But and so I think that's the place of you know,

(09:28):
particularly boys' schools, and we're talking about young men, to
put the right picture in front, or at least a
picture that challenges, you know, some of those stereotypes that
are constantly flooded through social media.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Steve, is there something that you felt could be better
tackled together as a group rather than on a school
by school basis.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (09:50):
Look, I think I speak on behalf of my own
school and my own journey, and we're at Saint Thomas's
in a very multicultural school, and our journey over over
time has been a really enjoyable one for me personally,
been in the school for a long time, and you know,
over time you do pick out some real gold nuggets

(10:12):
and real gems that that do work. To me, it's
always felt a real waste for that to just be
kept within one school. So I think collaborating across a
really wide range of schools that all have a have
a shared purpose and that we're all educating quite a
specific group, which are boys. It just makes absolute sense

(10:33):
for us to come together and work closely, you know,
and in the hope that you know, we can actually
share that even wider to our colleagues and co ed
schools that are also obviously educating boys.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Now it makes a lot of sense. So going back
to these sort of social and identity identity issues that
have been highlighted here, how do you tackle those?

Speaker 7 (10:54):
Yeah, good, good question.

Speaker 6 (10:55):
I mean one of one of the things I'm really
loving at the moment is, you know, I've really gone
and spoken to a lot of young lot of boys
and young men get their view on the world. How
do they see things? How do they see where they sit?
In just as an aside of shameless plug here've been
putting together a podcast with young people called Educated Hearts

(11:18):
and Minds, and I interviewed a twenty year old just
for that last week. And just listening to young people
talk about how they view the world, how they view
their place in the world, I actually it does fill
me with some quite a quite high levels of confidence
that actually the young people are probably for me a

(11:40):
step ahead. At times, I sometimes think it's the adults
or the stereotypes or the focus on real negativity or
that kind of deficit mindset around our young men that
actually is holding back the whole process. I think there's
some real, real gold nuggets and actually listening to the
real positive stuff coming out of young men and focusing

(12:00):
on that and using that as a vehicle for change,
Whereas I probably see, whether it be through social media
or for that man of mainstream media, you know, we
do tend to focus on the really negative behaviors of
a minority.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, it's a good point.

Speaker 6 (12:15):
And then, you know, I think all of a lot
of young men I speak to feel really frustrated. You
know that they are painted, you know, through that same lens.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
I'm going to join you with the shameless flags. In
my podcast A Little Things, I spoke to Andrew Rayner,
who wrote a book called Better Boys, Better Men than
New Masculinity, and he said, you've got to get in
the trenches with these boys, Steve. You've got to listen
to them, You've got to understand what's going on with
them and what's influencing them.

Speaker 6 (12:43):
Yeah, so you're so true, and I've read that read
his bockets outstanding. You did right, And actually I think ironically,
the answer is by getting in the trenches and listening
to our young men, empowering our young men. You know,
I think that's so so important. It's it's a funny one.
It's what a slightly controversial thing to say, but you know,

(13:04):
I feel, you know, in the last you know, ten fifteen,
twenty years, maybe even longer, and as a father of
a daughter, you know, a young woman, have really had
constant messaging, you know, around give it a go. You
can do anything, anything's possible. And I absolutely see that
all the time. I think, and sometimes sometimes the message
for boys is kind of the opposite to that.

Speaker 7 (13:26):
It's like, don't.

Speaker 6 (13:27):
Put your head above the trench. You just stay under
the radar, don't draw too much attention to yourself. You know,
sometimes if you get it wrong, you're going to be
a target. And I think it's time for us to
probably switch that up. Awe, but by focusing on all
that wonderful positive stuff out there rather than the negative

(13:48):
stuff of a very small minority that I think's holding
back a culture, you know, within young men.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
Look, I know they're not your responsibility, but do you
worry about boys in the co ed schools?

Speaker 6 (14:00):
One hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely, And it's interesting because worry.
It's all I worry. It's to be honest, it's more
like I feel a responsibility to put forward the voices
of all those that are really interested in the growth
and development of young men and sharing that good work

(14:23):
rather than you know, as I say, it's kind of
a modern world, this propensity to really focus on negative
stuff of a minority. And there's some great stuff going on.
I mean in boys schools we're probably fortunately, we are fortunate,
you know, to have a target market and the young
men that are in our care Now I know from

(14:44):
previous research that we've done with phil comings from circle
education as across all measures, you know, boys achieve really well,
very well in our boys' schools. So I think there's
a lot of really good work that's going on. I
think one of the things I'm most excited about is
across our network is a real focus on character education.

(15:06):
You know, we know if we build all that work
underneath the surface before we focus on things like academic outcomes,
we get those outcomes rather than doing it the other way.
So it's something that really excites me. You know, I
think for me, I find boys are incredibly relational relationships.
That's for boys to have to have a sense of

(15:27):
belonging is huge. You know. I don't think boys can
achieve without connection and belonging. And I see that on
a daily basis. The same thing I hear right across
our boys' school network, and I think, you know, the
term we hear a lot is brotherhood coming from our
young men, and I think there's a real, a real

(15:50):
need to feel that sense of brotherhood before they kind
of have that confidence to talk about their own identity
and to really be confident to give everything one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
A sense of belonging. Steve, Hey, look, thank you so
much for your time this morning. Really nice to talk
to you. That was the principal, Steve Hart from Saint
Thomas of Canterbury College, ninety two, ninety two is our
text if you'd like, tokay, I feel moving right along
now to the US and the war of words between

(16:21):
Elon Musk and President Donald Trump continues with the latest.
US correspondent Dan Mitchinson joins me. Now, good morning, Dan,
and good morning to you. Okay, President Trump and Elon Musk,
how could this relationship and the deterioration of this relationship
hurt the Republicans going into midterm elections next year.

Speaker 8 (16:41):
Do you think, well, I think that's that's going to
be a big question right now too, just because both
sides are a little raw. One of your colleagues recently
asked me if there could be a winner in this
battle between this between these two and I said, well,
maybe I wasn't sure, But if you look at the
long game and the more I've had time to think
about this, I mean, Trump's in office for another couple

(17:02):
of years, then he's out in the private sector. Elon Musk,
He's in this for as long as he wants to be.
And then you've got all these politicians that are looking
ahead to the midterms next year and are thinking, Okay,
maybe we should just stay in the shadows and see
how this plays out for the time being, especially with
so much relying on this tax and domestic policy that
the president's trying to pass.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
So Trump is threatening serious consequences if Musk turns and
starts fundraising supporting the Democrats. First of all, do you
think we could actually see that from Musk?

Speaker 8 (17:34):
I don't know, to tell you the truth, I think
he has enough of an ego where he might just
want to poke the bear, but he did say he
being Donald Trump. Earlier today he said his relationship with
Musk is over, and he did say, quote serious consequences
if Musk starts to fund Democrats who are running Republicans,
but he didn't really say what those consequences would be,

(17:56):
and he went on to add that he had not
had any discussions about whether to investigate Musk, and just
yesterday he said, you know what, I haven't even had
a chance to think about him. I'm not even he's
not even on my rate right now. Well obviously he is,
because hours later he's talking about these quote consequences.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Have we seen We have seen a little bit of
a de escalation though, of the tweets coming from the
two of them. Do you think they both just yes?
Is this a temporary pause? Do you think Dad?

Speaker 8 (18:24):
It might be? I mean, it might be. And you
know what, I want to circle back to say, I mean,
this is something where I hate to say I told
you so, but I kind of told you so because
six or seven months ago, when we were talking about this,
I said this would be lucky the last six months,
because you've got two of the biggest egos in the world,
and two of the most powerful people in the world,
and two people who love to say what they're thinking

(18:46):
without first thinking about the consequences. And I don't think
this was ever going to be a long lasting friendship.
I think this was going to be a couple of
people trying to get the most out of each other
while they could. And Muscle was never going to stick
around for the long term. I mean, he's got his
own company to run, which, by the way, stock in
Tesla has just been tanking since he turned his attention
away from it. And you know, Trump gave Musk this

(19:06):
congratulatory Oval Office send off for his work leading up
to all the cost cutting efforts in the administration. He
gave him a golden key with the White House insignia
on it, and then days later, this whole thing explodes.
So it's like watching a couple of kids on a
playground going back and forth, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
It is, Well, it is probably the most predictable thing
to come out of President Trump's you know time so far,
isn't it. As you say, we all kind of were
waiting for it, and then it looked like there, we're
almost going to be adults about it, and then it
kind of all blew up a bit. Alan also mentioned
the need for a third political party in the ueas

(19:43):
you think he's seriously considered funding one.

Speaker 8 (19:47):
Oh boy, you know, if anybody could, I mean, he'd
be the guy to do it. I mean, he says
it's time for this political party to represent I think
he said the eighty percent of that in the middle,
And you're right, I mean, we do need a third party.
But the last time that we had anybody of significance
was was decades ago when we had Ross prow who
got any you know, really significant part of vote. But

(20:08):
I think he's going to want to. I think he's
going to want to repair his relationship with Trump as
things cooled down between the two a little bit. Circling
back to what you asked me a little bit, And
if he were to go ahead with the third party,
even with Trump not able to run again after this,
I think Trump would just do everything in his power
to try and put a damper on that and scare Republicans,
just like he did before he ran for a second term.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
We mentioned before. You know, Trump is throwing out these
two words, you know, serious consequences. You'd have to presume
that that would be around Musk's business interests and talking
about regulations and investigations and things, wouldn't you.

Speaker 8 (20:46):
I think so. I mean, you've had people that have said, Okay,
you've got to look into Musk's background, let's let's kick
him out of the country. But you've also got Trump
talking about revoking his Musk's ally Jared Isacman to head
the US National Aerononics and Space Administration. And apparently the
reason why that happened was because somebody had said, hey,

(21:08):
mister Trump, this guy had donated in the past to Democrats,
and that kind of let this fuse from Musk, who,
in all fairness I think has been pretty obvious that
he wanted to buy his way into the US space
program such as it is since day one with this relationship.

Speaker 3 (21:20):
So you're right.

Speaker 8 (21:21):
I think if Trump really wants to hurt Musk, it's
by saying, Okay, we're not going to use use you
for this anymore. And if Musk wants to hurt the
US because right now NASA is not in a great position,
it's to say, okay, well, if you're going to be
like this, then I'm going to pull my space Dragon
or my SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, which is the only one

(21:42):
that we have right now capable of sending astronauts to
the International Space Station, although Musk has backed off that
just a little bit.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
Dan, at the end of the day, I don't think
we're going to have it outright when or aren't we.
They've both got a certain amount of power and a
lot of money and a social media platform in their pocket,
haven't they.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Well, they do, they do.

Speaker 8 (22:00):
I mean, who knows what Trump's going to do when
he's out of office. I'm sure he's going to remain
very high profile. And if we're talking the law game,
I mean, Muscus can ride this out as long as
he wants with a few bumps in the current administration.
So I think he's going to come out all right.
But we'll still have some maybe some bruises from going
up against Trump, who never likes to back down or
admit he's wrong even when he is.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
I think we probably will thank you so much that
with Zeris correspondent Dan Mitchison maz Texas say, I love
this guy as a father of three boys. He talks
so much sense. That with Steve Hart, who were just
speaking to and if you do want to have a
listened to the podcast that I mentioned, it's The Little Things.
We spoke to Andrew Rayner, who wrote the book Better Boys,
Better Men than New Masculinity. If you are someone who

(22:44):
was after some insights on how to help ole boys,
it is a great conversation to have a to have
a little listen to. Right up next, local politics, it
is twenty seven to ten.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
It's the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin on news Talks
at b.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
And zed Herold Political or a Jamie answers with me.

Speaker 4 (23:07):
Now, Good morning Jamie, Good morning Francesca.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Okay, So a rather bizarre story this week about the
PM's deputy pre secretary who resigned after allegations of recording
Wellington's sex workers. When that came to light, What impact
could this have on the Beehive.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
Yeah, the Beehove appears to be genuinely blindsided by this.
No one working there, or at least anyone I've spoken to,
appears to have had even an inkling of this alleged behavior.
The Prime Minister how to press conference on Thursday where
it was quite clear how angry and I think fair
to say upset Christopher Luxen was. There's rightfully been a
number of questions merged from this whole scandal about the

(23:45):
processes involved in vetting Beehive staffers, particularly those like this
individual who would have had access to extremely confidential information
and are therefore potentially vulnerable to blackmail. And to be clear,
there's no evidence that's occurred here, but it has prompted
agencies to look at what holes there might be in
the system. So, for example, or if a staffer moves

(24:08):
from one ministerio office up to the Prime Minister's office,
should they undergo a new round of vetting to see
if anything has changed in their circumstances. And the Primis
has also made clear he wants to have a look
at how different agencies interact with each other. We know
this alleged behavior came to police's attention last year and
made its way all the way up to the Police executive.

(24:30):
So why didn't they let Ministerial Services, this is the
department which employees be Hive staff is why didn't they
let this department know about this investigation? Are there limitations
due to privacy and should that be outweighed by the
need to make the beehive or our intelligence services aware
of such an investigation. There will also be probably a

(24:51):
look at potential legislation changes. You know, audio recordings aren't
captured in some of the legislation and the photographs this
man allisedly took were done in public places. So does
our legislation need to be updated? These are the types
of questions the bee High and government departments are now
going to have to grapple with.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
There's quite a few questions Jamie to be answer.

Speaker 5 (25:14):
Thinking abouts in the system?

Speaker 2 (25:16):
Yeah, yeah, okay, all right, we've established that right. Finally
the Ta Party Mahoriti Harker debate has been settled. How
did MP's approach the recommendations for all the three years
to be suspended.

Speaker 4 (25:27):
It's felt like an eternity, but Parliament has finally voted
to support the Privileges Committee's recommendations which are to suspend
Hannah Rafferty might be Clark, Debbie Nawi, were Packer and
Rawdie White Teti for their involvement in that hukker last year. Now,
the vote was a long party line, so the government
voted to support and the opposition was against it. There

(25:48):
was no compromise or any sort of back down. It
was all pretty standard stuff. But the debate itself was
really interesting. I sat through it in the House and
it went for about three hours. There were some really
colorful moments, so withst and Peters, for example, moved to
the Prime Minister's seat for his speech, which felt like
a bit of a power play, but then he had
to apologize after calling Whitetti's muckl a scribble on his face,

(26:13):
and WHITETI held up a noose to symbolize what he
called the silencing of Moldy people. But there's some other
contributions I think worth mentioning. So for example, Hannah who
is the Party Maldi MP who began the hucker and
went viral for it. She got really emotional during her
speech talking about the feeling of having her voice taken away.

(26:34):
She said that she wants there to be a legal
duty for politicians to respect and uphold the Treaty of
White Angy, and she's introduced a member's bill to do that.
There's also Labor MP's Woolly Jackson and Adrian ru Rafah
he's a former Speaker of the House. Both of them
actually turned to to Party Moldy and implored them to
think about apologizing as well as their long term strategy.

(26:57):
Rue Rafi's speech in particular struck me. He highlighted that
to make change to party, Maldy actually first needs to
actually show up to some of the on legislation, but
also used the mechanisms in the house to improve things
rather than just trying to disrupt the proceedings all the time.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Thank you so much, Jamie. Nice to catch up with you.
It is twenty one to ten.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
It's a Sunday Session full show podcast on iHeartRadio powered
by News Talks b.

Speaker 4 (27:26):
Right.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Last night, some families of Pike River Mind victims, along
with members of the cast and crew, attended the world
premiere of Pike River at the Sydney Film Festival. The
feature film tells the story of the Pike Rivermind tradedy
that took the lives of twenty nine men back in
November twenty ten. Told from the perspective of the families,
the story centers on close friends and Osborne and Sonya
rock House, who both lost a family member in the explosion.

(27:49):
Director of Pike River is Rob Saki's and he joins
me now from Sydney. Good morning, Good morning, How was
it to see the premiere on the big screen last night?

Speaker 9 (27:59):
Well, I of course have seen the film probably about
one hundred times.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
But with a crowd with ans and family and crew.

Speaker 9 (28:10):
Yeah, it was. It was beautiful, to be honest, it
was a really really special screening. I it was. It
was a very full house and people were very clearly
so engaged with the film. I mean there were a
lot of tears. You could literally hear that the tissues
coming out, which was appropriate for the subject. But what

(28:33):
I loved about it was there was also a lot
of laughter throughout because the film, as you know, is
about this terrible thing, but it is also about this
beautiful relationship between Sonya or friendship I should say, between
Sonya and Anna and and they're you know, they're real,
you know, they're coasters. There's how Islanders they and and

(28:56):
there's there's actually you know, little little pockets were appropriate
of humor throughout the film, and and there were actually
actually a lot of laughs. I think people found found
that quite a relief, you know that they were just
sort of sitting in this horrible space for two hours.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Sonya and Anna were there last night. I know that
they had seen the film before. What was their reaction
when they first saw the film.

Speaker 9 (29:20):
They watched the film actually at my place, and I
sat behind them watching them watching the film, and they
were often mirroring the action going on in front on
the screen, on the screen beyond literally.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
What a compliment to you?

Speaker 9 (29:40):
Yeah, well, it's when Robin Malcolm would at times reach
out to hold you, to hold the hand of Melanie Lynsky.
I would see in front of me and shadow the
real Sonya and Anna reaching out to hold each other's hands.
They were not conscious of that at all. They were
so in it. And at the end of that screening

(30:02):
it was the film wasn't quite completed then. But at
the end of that that screening they just sat there
in silence, and Anna said out loud, very quietly, I'm
just so proud.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
Yeah, look did She.

Speaker 9 (30:19):
Wasn't talking about the film as what was interesting. You know,
they for the first, for the very first time, they
saw their own journey, and that's a pretty rare experience.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
And I love the way that you have scented this
film around their journey. You know, the film never goes
into the mind, and I know that was a deliberate
decision for you really, we're looking at this impact on
the families, on the community, the long long impact, Rob.

Speaker 9 (30:46):
Yeah, well, you're looking at the impact, but you're also
looking at the fight. You know, they've had to fight
for almost fifteen years now to achieve justice and accountability,
and that fight is ongoing. It's not a cheat.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
The film is.

Speaker 9 (31:03):
There might be another film in five years when we
find out what actually happens. But you know, the tragedy
of Pike is they shouldn't have had to fight the
correct I believe the correct processes, justice processes particularly should
have should have just happened. And whether people went to
jail as a result of it or not, that's for

(31:23):
the justice system to decide. The problem with Pike is
the justice system never really got a chance to decide
because those who I think should have been standing up
in court should have been held accountable, weren't they Just
they just walked away with with with no repercussions at
all and no chance of justice. That's what the families want.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
Is that why this project is so important to you?

Speaker 9 (31:51):
Oh? I mean I think it's I think it's yes,
But I mean there's so many reasons why it's important
to me. But I think it's you know, I think
it's it's clearly enormous and very resonant New Zealand story.
You know, those two words Pike River mean so much,

(32:12):
you know, they mean they're not that that doesn't that
those two words don't just represent a mine in the
West Coast. They don't just represent the violence of an
explosion that really sort of exploded that small town of
Graymouth and it surrounds, But they it represents I think
a sort of a stain on New Zealand's good name, right,

(32:33):
a stain on I think our process of justice and
our sense of fairness. You know, when I grew up
in New Zealand, I thought it was a fair place.
I thought it was a just place. And usually it is.
But sometimes when events like this happen, and Pike River
is not the only one the people who we should

(32:54):
be treating with the most care but the most fairness.
You know, we should be wrapping them in bubble wrap
and guiding them through a process of justice that that
is fair. You know, THEA to them also, you know,
thea to those who may be brought to justice. You know,
it's not about if I when I explored the story.

(33:17):
I discovered that that fairness just didn't exist in relation
to Pipe River. It was I think some of it
is quite disgusting and I think people will be really
shocked when they see it or put together in the
film form. I was, and that's what motivated me to
make this film.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
Rob congratulations on an amazing cast. Melanie Lynsky, Robin Malcolm,
Lucy Lawless, all of them absolutely brilliant in this film.

Speaker 9 (33:45):
I mean, we're so lucky, aren't we. But the reason
they're there is because of Sonya Rokas and Osborne and
the other Pipe families. These are actors that care about
telling this story. And that's the only reason they're there.
This is not a huge budget film and we've got
Melanie Lynsky in it. We can't afford Melanie Lynsky, That's ridiculous,

(34:05):
but no, no, she wanted to come back and tell
the story. And absolutely the same for the others. The
generosit I mean, the general the generosity of for example,
Lucy Lawless, who plays Helen Kelly in the film, was enormous.
She had one she was shooting another project and she
had one day off Sunday while she was shooting, and

(34:28):
she for I think three Sundays in a row. She
took that day off and she came to set with
us so that she could play Helen Kelly in the
Pipe River fell.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
Oh, Rob, really appreciate your time this morning. Thank you
so much. I have seen the film, but I'm terrified
I'm going to break the embargo that I have because
it's not out here in New Zealand until October. It's
going to be making its New Zealand premiere in October.
But I've got to say this film linkeerd with me
for days. It is incredibly moving. I can't wait for
you all to enjoy it. It is eleven to ten

(34:58):
years to Ezebb.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
Putting the time questions to the newspakers, the mic asking breakfast.

Speaker 10 (35:04):
Mmmond endorsed the Privileges Committee recommendation the Maori Party Chair
of the Privileges Committee due to the Coldin's back with us.

Speaker 6 (35:09):
Which is not about the Harker, It's not about that
interrupts the vote, finger pointing and terms. There is a
gun movement at three Act MPs and none of the
protocols we're respected in Parliament. Whatever we do, we've got
to follow those protocols.

Speaker 10 (35:22):
That's the arrogance of it, isn't it. I don't can't.
I can't work out whether they want to get it
or don't want to get it, or do get it
but just don't want to run it. But only in
other words, I just don't take them seriously. I just
I'm so fed up and sick of the well I
think they're not serious people.

Speaker 6 (35:35):
No, no, well they're not serious people.

Speaker 10 (35:38):
Back tomorrow at six am the Mike Hosking Breakfast with
a VDA News Talk ZEDB.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
Keep It's simple, It's Sunday.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
The Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin and Whig calls for
the best selection of great readings used Talk ZEDB.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
Thank you so much for your textas Morning Summer textas s.
Why was the film premier in Australia not New Zealand.
It's very common for films to have two premiers. They
want to have a world premiere and you generally will
take advantage of an international festival. It can help promote
it helps sell it overseas and things. This was actually
you know, the film was invited to be a special

(36:22):
presentation at the State Theater at the Sydney Film Festival,
so it was given very very good prominence over there,
so that's really good for the festival for its kind
of global life. It has a New Zealand premiere because
the film is going to go into cinemas after the
premiere of the thirtieth of October, so of course you
have your New Zealand premiere just before it goes into
all our cinemas. And of course that premiere is going

(36:44):
to take place in Greymouth because the film could not
have its New Zealand premier anywhere else. And I know
that that will mean a lot to Rob to take
the film back there. He did work a lot with
the families in the process of making this film, interviewing them,
hearing their stories. Some of them are actually extras in
the film as well, So I know that he is

(37:05):
very passionate about bringing that film back and having its
premiere in Graymouth. Mascid texta going look as Trump's threatening
consequences against America, Musk or the world or is he
threatening Musk alone? In his I am the greatest attitude
And yeah, you're right. It was a bit of a
vague conversation telephone interview that he did with the NBC

(37:25):
News and he said there would be serious consequences of
Elon Musk funded US Democrats running against Republicans who vote
for the President's sweeping tax cart and spending bill, and
he said that his relationship with the billionaire donor was over.
He declined to say what those consequences would be, and
went on to add that he had not had discussions
about whether to investigate Musks. So I am presuming they

(37:46):
are all about Musk fingers crossed. Let's hope that's contained.
Thank you for the text. It is six to ten.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
The Sunday Session Full Show podcast on my Heart Radio
powered by News Talks AB.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
I never tire of watching a cirt desilat show. They
have taken acro in the world of circus to a
whole new performance level. It's always extraordinary. But how do
they do it? How do they keep pushing the high
risk stunts of the storytelling? And how much training does
it take to be in the show? We get answers
to all these questions next, when old Off Trebble joins me.
He is a former hand balancer who is now the

(38:23):
artistic director of the latest show to come to New Zealand.
We're going to finish the hour some new music from
Brett Mackenzie. This is all I need.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
It's Sunday. You know what that means.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
It's the Sunday session with Francesca Rutkin and Wickles for
the best selection of great reads Us Talks.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
It'd be.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Good to have you with us. It is a seven
past ten here on New Talks. You have been Look,
I do love the magic of a circus. If any
of you had been to a Circus sole show, you
will know that are just incredible. The stunts these artists
performed defy belief Right Circus heading back to New Zealand
later this year with the show Courtillo. The production is
led by artistic director and longtime circus performer ol Off Trouble.

(39:57):
He joins me now for a bit of an insight
into how circus slay artists learn and perform these incredible stunts.
Good morning, Oh thank you so much for being with us.

Speaker 11 (40:06):
It's my pleasure to be here.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Your expertise is hand balancing. Talk me through what that involves.
It's not just handstance of it.

Speaker 12 (40:17):
No, it's everything you do while you're enhancedand it's a
lot of flexibility, of contortion, of bending the body into
all kinds of positions while you're balancing on one arm.
That's when I was doing back in the days when
I was an artist myself.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
How long did it take you to master that skill?

Speaker 11 (40:37):
That's a tricky question.

Speaker 12 (40:38):
I started training circus at the age of ten on
a recreational level, just for.

Speaker 11 (40:43):
Fun and to just play with it.

Speaker 12 (40:45):
And then when I was twenty years old, I moved
from Germany to Canada to Montreal, where I studied four
years at the National Circus School and really specialized and
trained between four and six hours of hand balancing every day.
But then it doesn't stop, Like even once you start
performing and graduating, you keep training and you keep adding
new tricks and try to get better and better and better.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
And would that be a similar experience that a lot
of the performers in circus that I have had.

Speaker 12 (41:13):
Yeah, it's there's a couple of different ways to get
into circus late. There's one side where people come from
high level sports, from gymnastics or from rhythmic gymnastics or tumbling, diving, trampling,
and those people they have their their body is already
completely tricked, so then what they have to focus on

(41:35):
is more the artistic side of it, to learn to
move or to dance, or to become an artist on stage.
That's then the tricky part. Another way to get into
circu is either you come from a circus school where
you've already trained in dance and acting and you have
vocal lessons and you already have that whole package that

(41:57):
ideally an artist who is on a circus lay stage has.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
So when you were ten years old, did you have
any idea that this could become life?

Speaker 11 (42:07):
Oh? Never, I had no idea.

Speaker 12 (42:09):
At nineteen, and then at twenty I moved to Canada,
so it went really really fast.

Speaker 11 (42:14):
No, it was really just.

Speaker 12 (42:16):
My friends were playing soccer or basketball, and I was
lucky that in the city where I grew up there
was this local children and youth circus where Friday afternoons,
for two hours we would learn how to juggle and
how to do basic partner acrobatics and a little bit
of aeriel. But it was really more playing circus. And
in the summer we would have a little circus tent

(42:38):
and we would sleep there for two weeks and we
would put a program together and in the last couple
of days we would perform the shows and then it
was that famous snowball effect of doing a little bit more.
And then instead of having a summer job somewhere, I
was doing shows with friends where we would make money.
And then I went to university for three days and

(43:00):
it absolutely wasn't for me, so I said.

Speaker 11 (43:03):
I can I don't want to go back there.

Speaker 12 (43:06):
And then I had a conversation with my parents and
I said, well, what if I would really train focus
really for a year audition for the Circus School in Montreal.

Speaker 13 (43:15):
And in the.

Speaker 12 (43:16):
Beginning it was kind of oh, yeah, yeah, you do
that and then if ever you get accepted, we will
help you. They didn't take it that serious until the
envelope came back with your accepted to the school, and
then they were super happy and excited. And that's how
I ended up as a performer.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
What were you going to study at university or love?

Speaker 11 (43:36):
I was there for biology. What is it called sociology?

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Sociology?

Speaker 12 (43:43):
Yeah, okay, and geography and I'm so glad that I
did not do that.

Speaker 11 (43:49):
Best decision ever.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
Tell me. Growing up in Germany? Am I right that
there were a lot of traditional family circuses that would
tour the country. Is that kind of where you got
exposed to this absolutely.

Speaker 12 (44:01):
So there's back in the days when I grew up,
there were over two hundred and fifty traditional we call
them family circuses, where it's the family with the grandparents
and the kids who travel around to set up a
small tent, who do the entire two hour shows. It's
like six or seven people who are doing it. And
there was always something that fascinates me. I don't even

(44:22):
know how it started exactly, but I do remember that
I would always go with my mom as soon as
there was a circus or I could see a poster
somewhere in the city. My mother knew already there's no
need to argue because we will end up going going
to the circus.

Speaker 11 (44:37):
And watch it. I don't know what it is.

Speaker 12 (44:40):
It's something about or back in the days, it was
the smell of the of the wooden little wooden chops
that would be in the in the ring, the popcorn,
the light, the people clapping, it was just something this
magical little space.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Do they still have them other popular.

Speaker 11 (45:01):
Yeah, there's still.

Speaker 12 (45:03):
It's more difficult now, like it's everywhere a little bit
with live entertainment, and the pandemic definitely did not help.
It was a very very rough time, but they're still
existing and they're still touring all over Germany, Austria, Switzerland.

Speaker 11 (45:17):
Yes, it's still a thing.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Most of us can't comprehend what you and the other
performers can do. But the process of learning these skills,
particularly the ones done up high with an element of
risk to them, how do you safely learn these skills?

Speaker 12 (45:32):
That's really where either a circus school or circus of
late training comes in very handy, because we're really doing
everything we can to make the performance at night as
safe as possible. And those are all the things that
the audience doesn't see and shouldn't see. They should see
the thrill of danger and is it gonna go out

(45:53):
well or is it going to happen? Is it not
going to happen. It's just hours and hours and hours
of training with rigging specialists, with health and safety specialists
who are really analyzing the risk of each trick that
you see see in a circusolation. And there is whole
meetings and different departments coming together to make sure that

(46:14):
we're doing everything possible to make it as safe as possible.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
How much practice we go into a move before it
actually ended up in a show.

Speaker 12 (46:22):
It depends, but it's so much more than not the move.
It's people who end up on a circuslation show as acrobats.
They have probably trained tens of thousands of hours either
high level gymnastics or any of those sports, or have
been through a circus school. So then it really becomes
just to learn that trick. But all the preparation before

(46:45):
that trick is already done. It says, if you ask
a writer, how did you write a book? Well, first
they needed to learn how to write in general. So
it's that homework you have to do before and then
the tricks.

Speaker 11 (47:00):
It depends.

Speaker 12 (47:01):
Sometimes you have just a crazy idea and it works
out on the first try, and then you make sure
it will work again, and then the second and third
won't work, and then it works again.

Speaker 11 (47:11):
And sometimes you.

Speaker 12 (47:12):
Have to work multiple years just to get one trick,
one new trick in an act.

Speaker 11 (47:18):
So it really depends.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Wow, I mean, is the appreciate to keep upping the
game when in terms of the stunts and the performance
and what these performers can do. I mean it feels
like every time I see a production it just takes
another step.

Speaker 12 (47:33):
Yeah, I mean right now, it's also a lot of
how can we artistically and creatively make it different or
more exciting because we do usually between eight and ten
shows a week, So just to maintain that level of performance,
it's not just one competition or two competition you have
throughout the year. You actually have to perform it twice

(47:57):
sometimes three shows a day, so you hit a limit
of how far you want to push the body, even
though you could push a little other for once or twice,
but to be able to maintain that level of performance
for ten shows a week, you also have to be
smart about not pushing the body too far.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
So for Courtier, there's a bit of a difference to
it because you have this split stage setup. That's something
that's a bit unique.

Speaker 12 (48:24):
That's the only circusola show that has been created like that,
even because the show originally was created for the Big
Top in Montreal twenty years ago. We just celebrated our
twenty anniversary in April earlier this year, and we've managed
to take that same formula into the arenas. Now we're
still dividing the arenas in two different sides, and in

(48:46):
the beginning when the audience walks in, there's actually curtains
that are down, so you don't see the other side
of the stage yet. So it's a little bit of
a surprise and a reveal fairly early on in the
show where the curtains go up and you realize that
you're actually also watching the audience watching the show, which
is very very special.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
Now, that is very cool. So, as you mentioned, this
has been going for twenty years, so are you allowed
to sort of are you tweaking it? Are you allowed
to sort of make a few changes?

Speaker 11 (49:12):
And we're always tweaking it a little bit.

Speaker 12 (49:15):
And the beauty of this particular show is that it's
really it's a human show. We don't really hide the
artist behind lots of makeup. You really see the personality
of each artist, which also means that when the contract
of one artist is over and they decide to do
another project and we're bringing in a new artist, that
new artists changes everything. Of course, if you have seen

(49:39):
the show five years ago and you would see today,
you wouldn't realize those changes because the show itself, the
acts stay pretty much the same, but the energy on
stage it is really like a living creature where each
part you take out and when you put a new
part in, it changes everything just a little bit, which

(50:01):
is also really fun and which keeps it fresh and
alive for everybody who's on stage.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
Team is one hundred and twenty people from twenty seven
different countries that speak eighteen different languages. What does that
diversity bring to the show and the team.

Speaker 12 (50:16):
I mean, it's just so exciting to have people from
all over the world, all the different cultures and learning
about different cultures and learning how to communicate because in
some cultures you're very polite, other cultures you used to
be very direct with people. And to figure out that
balance of what works for everybody, and to figure people

(50:39):
out to see, Okay, how have they become who they
are and how did culture influence that. At the same time,
we're lucky enough to visit most of those culture with
the show, which then gives us a better understanding of
where people coming from how that culture influences.

Speaker 11 (51:00):
On one another.

Speaker 12 (51:01):
So it's really a beautiful thing to be able to
work with all those different nationalities.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
There are over twenty different circuit Selee shows. I mean,
there's nothing else out there like it is there. I mean,
it really is quite unique, isn't it.

Speaker 11 (51:16):
The level of production is really very unique.

Speaker 12 (51:19):
Like each show, just the music itself is composed for
each show. It's two hours of music each each each
custom piece. In our show, we have over two and
a half thousands pieces of costumes on stage and they
all have been designed and handcrafted specifically for this show.

Speaker 11 (51:42):
All the acts have been.

Speaker 12 (51:43):
Created, so it's the whole production of what you see
on stage is definitely very very unique.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Yes, because we talk about how extraordinary the performers are.
But you must have an incredible crew behind the scenes
as well. I mean you've got eight hours of ironing
just needed to get the costumes ready every day. That's crazy.

Speaker 12 (52:05):
Our show has the best crew period, That's what I
can say.

Speaker 11 (52:10):
But no, we have a huge The crew is huge.

Speaker 12 (52:14):
We have fifty three people on stage, which means we
have even more people on tour that the audience doesn't see.
And it's from the lighting team, the sound team, the
props and carpentry team. We travel with our own physiotherapist
with coaching the Wardrop department, but we also hire in
each city about one hundred local people who we need

(52:36):
to make it all happen. They come to help us
set everything up, they help us strike everything, but then
also they work with the wardrobe department on steaming costumes
for eight hours each day so that at night everything
looks the way it's supposed to look.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
You have been in a leadership role for six SLA
for a while now I'm just wondering the switch from
performer to artistic directing. How much was that about your body?

Speaker 14 (53:01):
Going?

Speaker 2 (53:02):
Oh, maybe just head enough now? Does it take a
toll on you physically, Yes.

Speaker 11 (53:08):
For sure, let's not lie about it.

Speaker 12 (53:11):
It's not healthy to do ten shows a week for
the rest of your life.

Speaker 11 (53:17):
I stopped performing.

Speaker 12 (53:18):
About ten years ago, where I had smaller injuries coming
up and then it takes longer to heal them and
to get back to where you were. And at one
point it was just let's listen to the body and
make the make the right decision. And then I actually
moved away from Circus lay for quite a while I
was doing something completely different with other circus companies or

(53:40):
even none circus related projects, and then a couple of
years ago it was time to reconnect with circu But
it also it really it helps and it makes the
job easier when you really understand also what artists need
and what the needs of people.

Speaker 11 (53:58):
Are who are on stage.

Speaker 12 (54:00):
And even for them to know that there is someone
who understands what their needs are are definitely a big
help for me in my position right now.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
Well, all off, we can't wait for you and your
team to get here to New Zealand. Thank you so
much for your time today.

Speaker 11 (54:16):
It's my pleasure. I can't wait to get there.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
Suda Sleas Corteo is coming to New Zealand and Atoba.
Tickets are on sale now. And don't forget that Annabel
Langbaine is with us after eleven. Tell us all about
her big move to France. You're with News Talks EP
It is twenty two plus ten.

Speaker 3 (54:32):
Relax, it's still the weekend.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
It's the Sunday session with Francesca Rudgin and Wit Calls
for the best selection of great reads used talksb.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
If you're looking for a great book recommendation, look no
further than Jon's picks at your local Wick Calls. Joan
is the head book buyer and she's also the Sunday
book reviewer on this program. Her job is to find
the books that you will love, and over the years
she's read literally one hundreds in search of the latest
and greatest. Luckily for reader's three new picks made their
way on the wick Calls shelves this week. Like all

(55:05):
the others, these are exceptional titles and that's why Jones
Picks take the guestwork out of deciding what to read next.
Just check out the Jones Picks section in every wik
Call store or online for your next best book. Happy
reading with books, games, puzzles, toys, gorgeous stationary and three
brand new Jones Picks this week. There really is something

(55:26):
for everyone at Wiggles.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
For Sunday Session.

Speaker 15 (55:32):
And tues told our Player show Right.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
Now, some of New Zealand's top entertainment industry figures, including
Crowded House Front and Neil Finn, are calling on Augland's
tobacker proposal to keep Western Springs Stadium as a world
class venue for concerts. All you have to do is
head to Aka have your say dot Auckland Council, dot Caard,
dot m Z and it's got all in this there
about the future of Western Springs Stadium and what the

(56:05):
options are. And you can choose whether you want, you know,
the twelve five hundred seated sports stadium or you want
the fifty thousand capacity multi purpose sports and entertainment facility
or another option. Because it's Auckland Council is they do nothing.
I'm being very naughty anyway, there are just letting you

(56:26):
know that you're allowed to have your safe. Submissions are
open until June fifteenth. Join me out of talking entertainment.
Steve Nell, editor at Flex dot cod and Z.

Speaker 16 (56:35):
How are you good morning? On Well, thanks a very
quick note. I have submitted on the stadium consultation. It's
super easy. Okay, there we go, do it online. Just
takes complements. Maybe it maybe take a bit of time
to digest the proposals first. On top of that, yeah,
on top of that process.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
And I know that you're someone obviously who's involved a
lot with the music industry and arts and culture and
things I'm imagining, and you do not have to tell
me that you would like the idea of having a
large capacity multi sort of sport entertainment.

Speaker 6 (57:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 16 (57:01):
I think it's a logical personally, I think it's a logical.
Next step for the city is to is to pursue
the ball up and retain public access to Western Springs
Fields year round.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
There we go. Okay, let's move on to a new
mental health psychedelic drug doco. It's called mind Mentors. It's
starting on Sky Open to Night at eight thirty. Then
it's going to be on Neon and Sky Go Yes.

Speaker 16 (57:24):
This is a two part documentary which examines possible solutions
to our country's mental health crisis. So it's a crisis
that's real. More than one in every four New Zealanders
suffer from anxiety. You know, we've got skyrocketing rates of
alcohol abuse and methamphetamine dependence and something's not working. So

(57:45):
this doco aims to break some taboo around psychedelic drug treatments,
which is really the kind of one of the vanguards
of mental health research at the moment. So Sonia Gray,
who you might be familiar with, it's been a long
time share of her own mental health journey, an advocate
for people's mental wellbeing, and so she goes as a

(58:05):
real novice in the space, goes on a journey to
understand more about how psychololic drug treatments can work. So
that that's taking LSD, that's taking ketamine, that's taking psilocybin.
Things have been taught, you know, the worst possible things.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
This is, this has all been researched by the University
of Yes.

Speaker 16 (58:23):
There's there's a clinical trials that are underway and you just.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
Not popping them at home and seeing how it goes.

Speaker 16 (58:28):
No, the process itself is really interesting. So she participates
in the clinical LSD trial, and so it's not like
she's going to meet someone on the corner of a
street on a Friday night to pick up little cash handover.
She's getting a parcel full of little vials. They might
be LSD, they might be placebos. That's obviously how they
can track the efficacy of the experiment. And each day

(58:52):
she has to video herself consuming a small amount under
her tongue. So it's to prove that you're not saving
it all up and having a good saved weekend yep, yep.
And instead we're seeing that the progress or.

Speaker 5 (59:07):
Or not progress.

Speaker 16 (59:07):
Like it's a you know, you should watch this to
find out that these things can have I find the
show was very much in the same sort of vein
as the sort of conversation starts that Paddy Gower or
Guyn Espiner have have had around alcohol, and so I
think it's it's the sort of thing that's going to
be useful to maybe just destigmatize both the mental health

(59:28):
crisis and also the fact that we do need to
look a little bit wider for some of these solutions.
Sonya's a great front person because as we hear from
friends and family, they're all so surprised that she would
consume anything like this, So it makes it very sort
of entertaining, audience surrogate to go.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
On, so very relatable, you know, big time.

Speaker 16 (59:53):
So I think this is a good one for friends
and family. This would be a good one to you know,
watch on the couch with the household. Definitely have some
interesting chats afterwards, and it's one percent not about getting
wasted on the weekends.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
Nice Animals Airs a new horror slash thriller which is
coming to cinemas this week.

Speaker 17 (01:00:10):
And I cannot wait to see this because it just
looks horrible And I know it's a weird thing to say,
but the whole idea in the premise behind this is
like my worst nightmare.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
But I can't wait to see it totally.

Speaker 16 (01:00:24):
Well, I want to tell you exactly how horrible it is.
By the New Zealand classification, it is rated R sixteen
for violence, cruelty, offensive language, sex scenes, and content that
may disturb.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
It makes me sound a bit sick, It's okay.

Speaker 16 (01:00:36):
But this is a really nice kind of superior B
grade thriller. It's set on a shark expedition boat. It's
an Australian sort of low level Australian tourism setting. And
Jay Courtney, who's the leader. He's a guy that Hollywood
sort of tried to make a leading man quite a
few times, that they often do with Ozzie's, like Sam

(01:00:56):
Worthington or whatnot, but here he's kind of like a
sort of mid mid era Russell Crowe's beefed up. He's
got this sort of brick something house physical to him
and is just utterly terrifying as a normal sort of
guy that could just disappear people off his boat. So
not not just a malevolent sort of villain in this,

(01:01:18):
but also lots of hungry sharks people go off the
side and some of them are separated into individual components of.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
Human beings thanks to nature.

Speaker 16 (01:01:30):
And a bit of a helping hand from a Aussie
bloke who's truly terrifying. So he's kind of like maybe
maybe think kind of a cross between John Jarrett from
Wolf Creek, just that kind of nasty jocular, aussy but
with a bit more kind of charisma and and that
sort of the sort of thing where he can have
this nice light, bloky banter and be old jocular. But

(01:01:52):
those eyes man that he plays, he's playing a terrifying
dead eyed guy.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
Someone describe it to me as jewels meats slilence of
the lambs. Is that fair?

Speaker 16 (01:01:59):
There's a bit of that. It's definitely. It's kind of
flirts a little bit with some of the more grubbiest
sort of end of the sort of the sort of
genre you woman, Woman in Captivity, Hungry Sharks. I already
dug it and this had me had me gripped to
the end. Really superior, but very resolutely B grade for

(01:02:21):
our list is in cinemas around the country from Thursday.
There are some sneaks on Wednesday. If you just can't wait,
go along.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Thank you so much, Steve. Good to catch up. Okay,
So on Thursday night we had the Radio Awards. It
was a great night hat especially for news talks eb
you're listening to the station of the year. But I digress.
But the awards were over two hours of clapping like
polite clapping for the competitors and then vigorous clapping for
our n z ME team, and it was exhausting. It

(01:02:47):
turns out, in order to make a big noise, we
were all clapping wrong. Michelle Dickinson explains that next it
is twenty six to eleven.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
It's the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin on News Talks at.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
B Doctor Michelle Dikinson joins me now with her science
study of the weeken As I was just saying before
the break, Michelle, at the Radio Awards, we were all
waking our hands together trying to make the biggest sound
we possibly could to support our colleagues and things, and
it turns out we could have been claping quite differently
and having just as good at a picked giving the

(01:03:26):
message a grass. This is so interesting.

Speaker 18 (01:03:28):
Did you know It's not often that I because I
read all these research papers forew so I have something
on Saturday. It's not often that I'm like.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
I did not know that I had no idea, But
here we go.

Speaker 18 (01:03:37):
Okay, So this is from the journal Physical Review Research.
It's open source, you can go read it. It's full
of maths. Sorry, so you might just want to look
at some of the pictures if that's not your deal
on a Sunday morning. But basically it says that the
sound of clapping is not from our hands hitting each other,
which we would assume, of course, it's actually the sound
of air being forced out between our palms. And I'm

(01:04:00):
like what, And then it got into it and it's
so exciting. Okay, I get excited about this. I'm minute.
So when our hands come together in a clap, they
trap a tiny bubble of air, and that tiny bubble
of air has to escape somewhere through the small gaps
in wherever our hands have it between our fingertips. Usually
it's between our thumb and our index finger, and that

(01:04:21):
creates a jet of air that blasts out and disturbs
the surrounding atmosphere, which results in a burst of sound
created by a phenomenon. And you'll know this phenomenon, maybe
not by name, a phenomenon known as the Helmholtz resonance.
If you have ever and it's usually with a beer bottle. Sorry,
if you have ever blown into a beer bottle over
the top of it and it makes that sound, it's.

Speaker 19 (01:04:44):
The same thing.

Speaker 18 (01:04:45):
So that forcing of the air through a narrow channel
either means that you can play Twinkle Twinkle a little
Star on your beer bottle in the bar, which many
of us have done, or it's also creating a sound
that is the sound of clapping. So this is what
I love about the study. First of all, how do
they do this? They've got ten people aged between eighteen
and seventy to clap different types of clap. Apparently there's

(01:05:08):
the cupped clap as well. Yeah, there's the palm to
palm clap piece, and then there's the palm to finger clap.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
The golf clippers. I call that nice. Yeah.

Speaker 18 (01:05:17):
And then they did high speed cameras microphones measured sort
of what that looked like. And then they three D
printed these fake hens.

Speaker 20 (01:05:27):
Out of the silicon.

Speaker 18 (01:05:29):
And then they got these fake hens that are made
out of different shapes in different and stiffnesses of the
silicon to basically clap thousands of thousands of times. And
they said up pressure sensors in them, high speed cameras
and microphones to measure literally every clap possible with these
fake hands and how they sounded and what they thought
the sound was coming from. And then they took baby powder.

(01:05:51):
This is why I love the study. It's so random.
They took baby powder and they sprinkled it into these
fake hans so they could watch where the jet of
air was coming out of.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
Do we sensible?

Speaker 18 (01:06:00):
And so if you read this paper, ignore the mess.

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
It's a lot.

Speaker 18 (01:06:03):
But look at the pictures of these jets are there
with this baby and it's really interesting. Well I found
it interesting anyway. So after all of this, they figured
out that it's not the sound is not from the
slapping of the hands together, it's from these tiny jets
of air. And they're able to measure the jets and
look at how the air was disturbed, and sound is
just vibration, which is air being disturbed, and that's what

(01:06:25):
they found. And they found that cupped hands trap more air,
which makes sense, which gives you a lower and a
deeper sound, and that flat hands give you a high
pitched pop. And there you go. What they found too
from doing this.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
Is that so even the flat hen where you feel
like there's only a little bit of air that can
get trapped in there, there is still the air coming out.

Speaker 18 (01:06:45):
Still the air coming out. And then they found that
everybody's clap is personal to them. So we have our
own clap fingerprint. Nobody claps like you, Francesca, and they
could identify you in a room maybe at the radio
wards from your clapping, because only you clap like you,
because it's based on the grooves of your finger and
your fingerprints and everything to do with just you. And

(01:07:05):
then they went down this hole of well, maybe we
could have like a school attendance system where kids just
quack when they came in and we could work out
in school. Anyway, I got a little bit bizarre. It's
an offer general physical review research, lots of mass ignore that.
Look at the pictures. It's kind of fun. Yeah, how
do we clip?

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
I love it very loudly and without a huge amount
of technique to it. I don't think it would be
my answer that, Michelle, Thank you so much. Broccoli is
our topic next. I do like broccoli, but tasty BROCOLI.

Speaker 3 (01:07:37):
You know you can't.

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):
I just don't get me brocly on its own. You've
got to end little something to your broccoli, and Mike
vander Elsen has the perfect idea. He's with us next
nineteen to.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
Eleven, The Sunday Session Full Show podcast on iHeartRadio powered
by News.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
Talks it'd be Mike vander Elson, good morning, Good morning.
I'd love you to have our resident shift with us.
And now it's interesting you're talking about brocoli. You're actually
talking about sprouting broccoli because that's what you grow in
your garden, which is really sensible because every time I
grew broccoli, I just this massive plant with one head
of broccoli and.

Speaker 21 (01:08:10):
It sort of didn't really seem worth it. And it's
a lot of time and it's a lot of energy
just for one head of broccoli that you finish off
on one meal.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
I know, I had no idea there was a thing
called sprouting broccoli. So it just continues to offer you
sort of smaller heads, does.

Speaker 21 (01:08:25):
It absolutely just like little kind of yeah, probably about
the maybe the tenth the size of a big broccoli.

Speaker 6 (01:08:32):
So just little, tiny sprouting broccolies.

Speaker 21 (01:08:34):
And the more you cut them, the more it kind
of encourages the broccoli plant to just sprout out more.
And we're just starting to cut house now and we'll continue.

Speaker 6 (01:08:43):
To cut them for about two to three months.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
I was just saying, I love broccoli. I think it
can be a fantastic vegetable, but just not don't give
it to me on its own.

Speaker 21 (01:08:52):
I sprouted sprouting broccli, and I and I believe like
I was doing a bit of research into it, because
you cut it so tender like that broccoli will come
up and you'll cut it within two or three days
and it's and it's definitely it is definitely sweeter than
normally broccoli.

Speaker 5 (01:09:07):
I saute it.

Speaker 21 (01:09:08):
So the best thing for spouting brocciare and this is
quite This is a really simple dish.

Speaker 3 (01:09:13):
So it's sprouting broccoli with.

Speaker 21 (01:09:15):
White cabbage and a chili garlic butter. So serve it
as a side dish, or you can put through some chicken.
You could serve some illume me with it, or even
put some noodles with it and kind of run down
that Asian fusion road. So bring a large pot of
boiling water to the boil, put a decent amount of
salt in it. You know, to take your broccolini, drop

(01:09:37):
them in count to ten, pull them out because they
are so tender. Ten seconds is maximum amount into ice water,
stop them, stop them from cooking, and bring out all
that beautiful color, like the color and the chloroform, and
then heat up a large cast iron pan. Start to
heat that while you make up the butter. So this

(01:09:57):
chili butter simply I use a pesta on water and
make the whole thing in a pest of water. Chuck
in like two or three closet garlic, crush them up,
Chucking a whole fresh red chili. Crush that into a paste.
And then to that, I've got about one hundred to
one hundred and fifty grands of butter. Crush the butter
and a little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper,
a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:10:16):
Of curly PARSI to give you a bit of color.

Speaker 21 (01:10:18):
And I actually made this dish last night, and I
actually added in a tablespoon of miso paste as well.
Then that's the butter done. Take your pan, heat it up,
crank it up. I start off by adding a little
bit of cabbage just to bulk the dish out more
than then take half a cabbage, cut into quarters, and
then just saute that in a little bit of oil.
Once that starts to work down, you might want to

(01:10:39):
add a little bit of water to that just to
speed that process up. Once it starts to work down,
chuck that into a into a serving dish, and then
add a little bit more oil. And goes your sprouting
broccoli that's been blanched. Saute, saute, saute, super fast is
going to take like ten twenty seconds. Last thing you
do is add a decent scoop of that butter. Saute
that until you start to get just a little bit

(01:11:00):
of nuttiness running through that butter, a little bit of color,
and then serve that over the top of the cabbage
and then spoon the rest of the butter over it
and serve it is delicious. And if you want to
go step food, you could squeeze a little bit of
lemon and maybe have some fresh cream.

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
Mars texts to say he like says broccoli with cheese
on top. I did a beautiful tarhini creamy tahini dressing
and drizzled that over some broccolini recently with some sort
of sliced almonds. That that was good.

Speaker 21 (01:11:24):
Yeah, you could pluck, you could blanche that broccolini and
then you could fire that onto your barb You could
get them in a car on yes, and then serve
it with yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
I did roast that one up. Hey, look, you're at
field days this week. If people want to come and
say hi, where do they find you next week.

Speaker 21 (01:11:40):
Yay field days. I love field Days. I'm not looking
next week, not this week, next next week. I from Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
I'm gonna be on our stand cooking up some amazing
food on the amazing angle fire. So just search ingle fires,
come and say hello Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.

Speaker 5 (01:11:57):
Brilliant.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
Thanks so much, Mike. And as usual, you can get
that recipe from good from scratch dot co dot in
z or you can head to Newstalk zib dot cott
in zaid food Slash Sunday. We'll get that up there
for you this week. And Trish just takes me to say,
francisca regular big head broccoli also re sprouts. It turns
into sprouting broccoli, So just cut the head, leave the
plant on the ground. Good to no Trish. See we're

(01:12:22):
not just not just the cooking segment, it's the gardening
segment as well. Thank you very much for your texts.
It is twelve to eleven.

Speaker 3 (01:12:28):
There's no better way to start your Sunday.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
It's a Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin and Wig Girls
for the best selection of great breaths us Talk Saty.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
Aaron O'Hara joins us now to talk wellness. Good morning,
good morning. It's Men's Health week nights to twelfth of June.
Let's have a talk about men and something that often
they don't like to talk about, and that is stress
and burnout.

Speaker 4 (01:12:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 20 (01:12:54):
I think men sometimes think that they're invincible and they
don't always look at their health until maybe it gets
to that crisis point sometimes. But stress is actually huge
and women and men's sex bear and stress. But sometimes
men will think that they're not stress when they really
are stress sometimes and that can then have that flow
on effect of ending up as burnout and sort of

(01:13:17):
hitting that rock bottom and then being like, actually I
need help now. But I think if we can really
pick it up earlier of knowing the signs of when
we are stress before it becomes chronic stress and then
leads into burnout as well. Which things of signs that
you are in a stress state is maybe being more irritable,
are being withdrawn from doing activities you usually would do,

(01:13:40):
Maybe a change in sleep pattern, maybe feeling a little
bit more on edge at work and not coping as
well with the workload and aft she's feeling a lot
more anxious these are signs that we might be getting
more stress and too much stress that could possibly end
up as the burnout. Now, burnout is more when we're
getting to that point where we're absolutely exhausted, so fatigue

(01:14:03):
and headaches and maybe the digestive problems starts creeping in,
difficulty concentrating. Even though you've got work to do, you
can't get it done because you've got no motivation and
you can't concentrate, can't focus. And that's when we've really
sort of gone from just normal stress to then ending
up in that burnout state, which is actually quite common
for men. And then that burnout state can also affect

(01:14:26):
mental health as well, and that might be getting more anxious,
more depressed, maybe more reactive or having anger towards, you know,
different situations that usually you'd be able to regulate your emotions.
And it's about, you know, learning when you're at that
point where you're actually in your high stress state and
you're actually kind of becoming more reactive.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
If you're listening to this and you go, do you
know what, I haven't quite been feeling myself recently. I
am just a little I'm just going to hang it
in there. I'm kind of surviving not thriving. What can
you actually do today or tomorrow? Where do you start?
Do you go to your GP and say, look, I'm
not coping so well? Where do I go from here?
Do you take control of things yourself? Do you look

(01:15:08):
for help elsewhere?

Speaker 3 (01:15:10):
What do you do?

Speaker 20 (01:15:11):
I think the time when you know that you're at
your limit and you're actually not coping, instead of being
like the New Zealand way of it, like she'll be right,
I'll get through this, it'll come right eventually, I think,
instead of being like acknowledging is probably the first step
I've been like, actually I need to do some things
for myself and for my health. And it doesn't necessarily

(01:15:31):
mean reaching up to account, so you might not be
at that point. It might be just going okay, I
need to get back to basics. There's always a good
place to start and looking at looking after your health.
You might have got so stress that you've actually stopped
doing all the foundation things, so things like keeping up
with some regular exercise, keeping a good balance, diet. It

(01:15:51):
might be just living on takeaways and whatever you can
get on the go. So you're actually going, okay, I
need to actually eat good food to feel good, and
that might be bringing more fruits and vegetables, maybe ordering
some healthier meal options if you are not able to
make your own food, and that will actually help you
to start feeling better. Prioritizing sleep because the number one

(01:16:13):
thing that always drops off as soon as we are
really stressed is usually can't get to sleep or can't
stay asleep, waking up in the night and thinking, I'm
so stress, I'll do some work That is not going
to help you feel good if you're getting up in
the middle of the night and trying to do computer
work in the middle of the night at three o'clock
in the morning. So really prioritizing getting at least seven,

(01:16:36):
if not eight, hours of sleep a night, and if
you need sleep support, getting some sleep support, maybe start
with some simple magnesium powder that you can actually all
tablets that you can get from our food shop. And
then getting that social connection and if you know you're
doing all those things already and still not coping, getting
seeking help, whether it's going to your local GP, talking

(01:16:57):
to a friend, maybe checking out, going to see or.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
Maybe work, because you know at a level where it's unsustainable,
So having a discussion about how to do things differentrently
out making changes.

Speaker 22 (01:17:08):
You know you Chase Yeah, Aaron love it. Thank you
so much for your time this morning.

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
Talk Soon the Sunday Session Full show podcast on iHeartRadio
powered by News Talks.

Speaker 3 (01:17:18):
At b.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
Annabel Langbyne has been dreaming of owning a home in
France for years. Finally her dream has been realized. But
as wonderfully as it's turned out, it has not been
an easy process. Annabel is with us next to talk
about her new adventure. And this is the latest music
from Sabrina Kappita. It's called Manchild.

Speaker 1 (01:18:13):
Welcome to the Sunday Session with Francesca Rutkin and Wiggles
for the best selection of great reads Used Talks.

Speaker 2 (01:18:29):
Good to have you with us. Coming up this our
Jason Pine on all the weekend sport, What about those blues?

Speaker 5 (01:18:35):
What about those warriors?

Speaker 2 (01:18:37):
Can't break for the cane though. We are going to
talk about ways to keep the kids entertained during the
next school holidays and travel. And Joan revisits a book
that many of us are talking about at the moment,
This Salt Path.

Speaker 3 (01:18:50):
For the Sunday Session.

Speaker 2 (01:18:54):
One of our most loved Kiby cooks is on a
French adventure that I think is just a romantic dream
for so many people. And about Langmine and her husband
Ted have brought a farmhouse in the south of France.
They are living over there while they renovate their new home.
Annabelle has been sharing updates on her Instagram, and I
thought best to get around to talk about how this
has all come about. Annabelle Langbaine bonjour, so nice to

(01:19:17):
who your French is. Good, isn't it well?

Speaker 13 (01:19:22):
I think a French person wouldn't say it was good,
but I can make myself understood.

Speaker 2 (01:19:27):
Good.

Speaker 3 (01:19:28):
Good.

Speaker 2 (01:19:29):
Now this move has been a long time coming for you.
When did the dream of a house in France start
for you?

Speaker 13 (01:19:37):
I think probably about eight years ago Ted was going,
I think we should buy a house from France. And
we have been coming here for probably thirty years because
I had a very dear friend who was a very
very clever cook, Daniel del Per, and she lived about
an hour and a half from here, so we sort
of had got to know the region really well. And

(01:19:58):
then we started looking and we just we must have
looked in eight years at about eighty houses, and we
were about to give up, and then this house just
came up through the real estate agent. And it transpired
later that she had had Christmas at this house for

(01:20:19):
twenty years because they were her parents' best friends.

Speaker 3 (01:20:24):
Wow.

Speaker 13 (01:20:24):
All, I felt like serendipity.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):
Absolutely eight years to find the right property. What was
that search like?

Speaker 23 (01:20:32):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:20:32):
What was the main problem with most of the properties?

Speaker 13 (01:20:37):
The main problem was that my gorgeous husband wanted to
buy an enormous chateau in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 2 (01:20:45):
Right expectations.

Speaker 13 (01:20:46):
Yeah, So we looked at quite a lot of those,
and then we did actually put an offer in on one,
and the next morning I thought, oh my god, I'm
going to be sick. And I said to him, wouldn't
it be a good idea if we withdraw our offer
now rather than wait for the because you get ninety days,
a ninety day period where you can was and he

(01:21:07):
looked at me, said, what do you mean with drawer offer?
And a lot of toys came out of the God.
Now we have this place, and it's an old farmhouse
that's really charming, and it's not in the middle of nowhere.
It's fifteen minutes to the airport and you're gonna fly

(01:21:29):
direct to London. But we're an absolutely bucolic, these crazy
frogs that sound like strangled magties. But I can see
one house from the distance and that's all fantastic.

Speaker 2 (01:21:48):
This house, though, as you say, a chance figned and
then you had to make a very late night sort
of rushed off the site unseen how nerve wrecking is that.

Speaker 4 (01:22:03):
Well.

Speaker 13 (01:22:03):
Of course Ted was horrified because he you know, he
loves a deal, so he thought he was going to
be able to wrangle a price. But the thing in
France is if you put an offer and at the
asking price, they have to accept it. But the trouble
was that some Americans had put an offering about twenty
minutes after us, and it didn't have any conditions whereas
ours did. So we jumped on a plane. It was

(01:22:25):
the middle of the Olympics. It was so stressful and
we kind of got down here and now offer was
going to expire about twenty four hours after we arrived,
and Ted being Ted said to me early in the
morning the next day, Oh, we're just going to look
at another property. Oh my gosh, what.

Speaker 4 (01:22:48):
He said.

Speaker 13 (01:22:48):
Oh it's another properance, got all the land, I don
amazing view. Anyway, we turned up and it possibly the
most horrid place that out of us ever seen. So
that was incredibly lucky. And then we came here and
we both literally stepped over the front door and looked
at each other and went, oh, my god, this is

(01:23:09):
our house. We both said it, this is it?

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
Where about in the south of France is it? And
why was that part of France your choice for a
second home.

Speaker 13 (01:23:22):
So we are in the southwest, so Bordeaux is in
our twenty car drive out to the coast. So we're
Ney're a town called Bergerac. And because this lovely friend
of mine, Danielle, drew me here in a way, because

(01:23:43):
we used to flat together when I was in my
twenties in New York and she was a divorced French
farmer living in New York, and we made this wonderful
friendship and we continued right through, you know, before I
was married, and then when I was married, and we
brought our children here when they were little, and so

(01:24:07):
there was this wonderful familiarity with the area. And it
is I mean, all of France is foody, but what
I really love about this particular area is that the
markets are just incredible and pretty much most of the
growers are all organic and so and the quality of
first is so good, and it's the heart of duck

(01:24:31):
and firegar and amazing cheeses. And you know, you can
drive an hour one way and there's rock for and
drive another way, and our another way and it's the
turn and drive another hour and it's the heart of
these incredible goats cheeses. And it just goes on and
on and on, and I'm getting fatter and fatter.

Speaker 2 (01:24:54):
And you're growing a lot at your property as well.

Speaker 13 (01:24:58):
No, we're not growing anything. We're growing weeds, lots of mulberries,
some fruit trees that are in desperate need of some love.
But the garden probably has been let go for i'd
say about ten years, so it's a pretty big mission.

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
You're now, I think about seven weeks into a renovation.
Is that right? How's that going?

Speaker 13 (01:25:24):
Well? We have an animal in residence which is called
a pine Martin, and if you look up pine Martin,
it is a quite cute, little looking little animal that
looks a bit like a weasel, but apparently has needle

(01:25:44):
like teeth and razor like razor like claws, and it
is incredibly vicious. And it started out you could hear
it clambering around in the ceiling. And then when we
were away this week and we came home and the
pine muntain had come down the chimney into one of
the living rooms and pete and chat all over all
the sofas, and it smells like a skunk because it's

(01:26:05):
got this horrible glend.

Speaker 2 (01:26:06):
So it was just like, ahha, the glamorous life of
living in the south of France and about the countryside.
So what do you do about your around, your the
pine muntin? Your friend there, I write a novel about it.

Speaker 13 (01:26:24):
This right, So I hilariously went off to the hardware
shop and all the men in the hardware shop came
over to told me how to make this trap work,
because it's one of those traps where you put a
dried prune in the trap and you have to leave
it for five days so that there's no smell of humans,
and then the pine mountain goes in and the door
falls closed behind it. The troublers the bene Martin hasn't

(01:26:48):
wanted to go on the trap, so has now put
the trap in the attic.

Speaker 2 (01:26:57):
You got a tricky tenant there in a bell. Oh
my goodness. Look, just just going back to the actual
purchase of the property. You know, you finally found this
house after eight years and you'd got this offer and
then you knew it was the place for you. What
is the process like then? Is it literally great? You
signed a contract and it's all no all Yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:27:16):
It's about one hundred and sixty nine page document or
in French, and it goes through a special type of
lawyer that's called a no tear and it takes so
you have a ninety day. Regardless of who's doing the
deal or what house you're buying, it always is going
to take ninety days. And during that period you the

(01:27:41):
vendor the purchaser are allowed to withdraw your offer, but
the person selling the house isn't allowed to withdraw their offer,
so it's very much in the buyer's favor. But you
have to go through to check that there's no asbestos
or termites or bah bah bah. And they're very well,

(01:28:03):
they've been French. They're incredibly bureaucratic, but they're very There's
a lot of box to tick. And the thing that
was lucky for us is that Ted has an iri
of Cassport, so he's an EU citizen, so we don't
get biffed out after ninety days.

Speaker 2 (01:28:21):
Brilliant. I mean, it's just it does sound like a
dream and a bell. And I know it's been a
dream for you for a long time. How does it
feel now to finally be living it.

Speaker 13 (01:28:31):
It's actually really exciting. I wake up every morning and
I am thrilled to be here. We both love the house.
I mean, it's a lot of work. It's been a
lot of work. It's one of those things where I
first came to understand the idea of a can of worms,
because you just open something and then you'd go and
then three days later you might emerge from that particular cupboard.

Speaker 20 (01:28:55):
So it's.

Speaker 13 (01:28:59):
It's an unfolding life. And I can see that Ted
is he has the same rhythm that he has in Monica.
He's him self a tractor and a weed eater, and
he's given me the weed eater and lots of tools,
and he's out doing his garden thing all day and
I am looking at things like it's actually a really

(01:29:21):
charming house. So in terms of furnishings, and we're not
doing a huge innovation. I'll put a new kitchen in
and I'll fix up one of the bathrooms. It's huge.
It's got nine bedrooms and nine bathrooms, so I haven't
even got down to the downstairs bathrooms yet or bedrooms.

Speaker 2 (01:29:44):
I know that you've commented in the past Center Val
that there were times where you know, throughout your career
you worked too hard. How good is it to have
hit this point in your life where you have the
freedom to do this. You know that hard work is
paid off to allow you.

Speaker 3 (01:29:57):
To get there.

Speaker 13 (01:29:58):
Lucky and I don't take it grounded, and you sort
of pinch yourself and go. You know, we all know
life can change on a dime, and so so one
of my friend's mothers once said, you need to look
at these years. Your kids have sort of left home
and they're making their own way in the world, and
you know, you've still can walk around without meeting a

(01:30:19):
walking stick, and you know you can. You've got lots
of energy, and there your golden years because you know
a lot of your responsibilities that you have when you're
a working parent, You're jiggling and juggling and there are
just enormous demands on you from every angle. And now
I do feel very privileged that I can you know,

(01:30:41):
I'm still doing some work, but I'm kind of doing
it in a way that it fits in with my life.

Speaker 2 (01:30:48):
No, it's and it's lovely of course this move. The
reason behind this move is that you're closer to your parents,
your children of course, who are both living in Europe,
which it must be wonderful to have them closer to.

Speaker 13 (01:31:01):
It's just wonderful. Roses coming tomorrow for the week. And
it's sort of like Sony, you know, she's in Lisbon,
so can she flies to Bordeaux and then jumps on
the train. Sean is in London and he can fly
directly in from London City Airport to Bertrax. So it
is fantastic to have this connection, you know, because it

(01:31:21):
was too hard for them and to us if they
were coming out to New Zealand just say at Christmas. Well,
by the time you've got there and recovered from the
trip and then had Christmas and then it's sort of
time to general and go home again. And it's such
a long haul. Whereas if we can be based here
for sort of five and a half months a year,

(01:31:43):
we can build a creative rhythm in our lives, do
things with our kids, have adventures, get to know some
of the locals. Hopefully my French will get to the
point where I'm actually really fluent on it. And this
most amazing history around here. We're on the Route de
la Resistance and on the eighth of May nineteen forty four,

(01:32:06):
exactly a year before the end of World War Two,
there was a huge thing with the Resistance and the
Germans and just about three hundred meters from our house
as a monument where four resistant Titus were killed, and
you go, gosh, it was only eighteen years ago. It's

(01:32:27):
quite extraordinary.

Speaker 2 (01:32:29):
Oh and about really nice to hear about where you
are and what you were up to. Thank you so
much for your time today.

Speaker 13 (01:32:36):
Oh I'd lovely to talk to you. You take good care.

Speaker 2 (01:32:39):
And thank you. Annabelle I Will. It was annabel Langbeine
and Avan was posting all about her renovations on Instagram.
The place is stunning, well worth a look. The Sunday
Session panel is up next to twenty one past eleven
Grab recover.

Speaker 1 (01:32:52):
It's the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudgin and Wikeles for
the best selections us talks'd be and it is.

Speaker 2 (01:33:01):
Time for our Sunday Session panel and I'm joined by
journalists if your producer and commentator Iron Gardener, Morning, Irene,
good morning too, and senior pr consultant at one plus
one Communications, Damien Venuto.

Speaker 4 (01:33:13):
Hey, Damien, good morning.

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):
Good to have you both with us. You know, I
have always thought that one of the dangers for me
of social media was that I would speak before thinking.
And I don't know how much thinking went on during
Thursday and Friday as Trump Andonon's relationship kind of bloded.
But I'm not sort of I'm not sure anyone's going

(01:33:36):
to win this battle. Maybe Trump in the short term,
Musk in the long term.

Speaker 7 (01:33:40):
Irene, Oh my goodness, French, Yes, you're where do wife again?

Speaker 2 (01:33:46):
It's been good entertainment for a quiet week.

Speaker 7 (01:33:48):
Clashed the giant egos. I I'm just backtracking slightly. I
saw this fantastic meme recently that said the professional way
to say I told you so was it was identified
early on that this would be a lightly outcome, And
I had to say, was anyone surprised that the romance broman.

Speaker 2 (01:34:11):
The most predictable thing of Trump's presidency so far? Right,
We're just were entirely sure how it was going to unfold,
But ah.

Speaker 7 (01:34:20):
And look, it's tempting to just laugh and grab the
popcorn and watch, but obviously there is a serious side
to it, because these two people have a lot of
power and they are slightly out of control, angry narcissist.
In terms of where it goes from here, personally, I
hope it goes in the direction that most gets Trump

(01:34:42):
out of the president, or at least in the short term,
gets Democrats at least one of the houses in the midterms.
And I'm not sure the amen might have for you.
I'm not sure on whether that is more. Would it
help more if Trump, sorry, is Musk through his weight
and money behind the Democrats, Or would it help more

(01:35:04):
if he set up some weird kind of another party
that split everything into pieces?

Speaker 6 (01:35:09):
Not quite sure.

Speaker 24 (01:35:13):
The interesting thing about that is that we're already seeing
the Trump strategy and response to the possibility of that
third party playing out. So one thing that you must
always look at when things start to go wrong for
Trump is what Steve Bannon is doing. And Steve Bannon
at the moment is kind of pushing out these narratives
that we need to question Musks the US citizenship. Now,

(01:35:35):
if you look at that, that straight out of the
playbook of like was Obama really a US citizen? It's
that classic example of you kind of burn the credibility
of somebody by questioning whether they are truly American. So
what they're trying to do there is consolidate their base
by discrediting Musk, and so you see that playing out
already behind the scenes. So I think I think Musk

(01:35:58):
has learned a very, very valuable lesson here that beating
Trump at his own game is incredibly difficult.

Speaker 2 (01:36:05):
But I also the I mean, there's been a bit
of a temporary de escalation on this, hasn't there. They've
gone quiet. Everyone's kind of said to them, you know,
now just call it, because the blows are pretty low,
so let's all just call it. But I think they've
also both realized they have a certain amount of power.

Speaker 14 (01:36:21):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:36:21):
Trump is aware of the fact that Elon Musk is
a very wealthy man with his own you know, social
media platform, which he can keep poking the bear if
he wants, and he probably knows a lot of things
that Trump would like him to keep quiet in the future,
you know, so he can sort of he can strove
the threats out which were very general and very quite

(01:36:42):
broad at Musk. But at the same time you do
wonder whether both of them have de escalator because they
know that this could just go on and on and
on until they both destroy each other.

Speaker 24 (01:36:52):
It is interesting that the first thing that must came
up with was the Epstein files, that something that Hump
was involved with Epstein, and then Trump responded as like,
this is old near as everyone knows that. I'm in
the documents and there was an investigation in nothing that
there was nothing. And I think that's an example of
maybe Musk doesn't know as much as.

Speaker 23 (01:37:11):
What we think he does.

Speaker 24 (01:37:12):
Maybe he was in that in a circle, but not
quite as close as what we really believe he was.
The one thing about Musk that is dangerous is that
he is notoriously known for using private investigators to get
dirt on people. And it wouldn't surprise me at all
if he's quietly behind the scenes doing that right now.
Because he's done this in the past with the girlfriends

(01:37:34):
people he perceives as enemies.

Speaker 23 (01:37:36):
He can be quite vindictive in that way.

Speaker 2 (01:37:39):
Is that Musk you're talking about?

Speaker 24 (01:37:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:37:43):
Can you imagine both of them will have the pi's
out there when there was a thought. There was a thought,
Irene that when all those articles suddenly earlier in the
week after they look like they've been an amicable split.
Suddenly the New York Times had all these articles about
Elon Musk and his family and his drug use and
things like that, and the sort of the rumor was
that they were leaked from the White House, so that
the White House had already started in a little bit

(01:38:04):
of a campaign against him.

Speaker 7 (01:38:06):
Both frides will be doing all kinds of things. I mean,
the interesting thing, you know, just picking up would say,
I mean, yeah, sure, find more dirt on Donald Trump.
But don't we know enough dirt on Donald Trump already.

Speaker 25 (01:38:16):
I mean, nothing seem to say. I mean, it doesn't
make any difference, no difference. The interesting thing at the
moment is that Trump seems to be the one that's
sort of going, you know, aiming a little higher and
a little more dignified. And I'd have to say, yes,
go pretty low.

Speaker 4 (01:38:33):
It's so true.

Speaker 2 (01:38:33):
I Rene. Hey, look, here's something I'd like to ask
you though, Irene, and that and that is that you know,
Musk went to Washington because he, you know, he could
see the benefit for him and his companies, and you
know he was there was a self interest as to
why he went. Do you think he's been burnt by
politics that actually he's probably thinking to himself, you know what,
I don't want anything more to do with this. I'm
going to go and do what I do best, which

(01:38:54):
is create companies and make a lot of money, and
I'm just going to walk away from politics. Or do
you think actually he seriously will be contemplating how he
has an impact for a self serving reason going forward.

Speaker 7 (01:39:06):
And policy hard to read because you're talking about a
massive ego, so it's kind of hard to predict. I
just wish, you know, what this mass of falling out
had happened before before, you know, whatever Trump did help
get us, sorry, whatever Musk did for me? How I
keep mixing up their name, They're obviously just one person
in my head. Yeah, yeah, before Musk got us Trump,

(01:39:29):
you know, I wish they'd fallen out of it earlier.

Speaker 2 (01:39:32):
Hindsight, What do you think, DMan? Do you think he
will stick at it or do you think there will
be enough pressure from investors and other people in his
lines who are going Can you just come back and
focus on you know, these businesses please.

Speaker 24 (01:39:44):
Well, the interesting thing is, in the short term after
Trump was elected, the biggest winner in the international scene
when it came to business was Trump, because the market
cap of all the businesses run by Musk during that
period shot up enormously. Right now, that's all kind of
back down a little bit because of the policy decisions
that Trump has rolled out. I think the the fact

(01:40:06):
that Mosk has realized that government is a lot harder
than what it looks from the outside will make him
pretty hesitant to get actively involved in the future.

Speaker 23 (01:40:15):
I do think that Mosk has political ambitions.

Speaker 24 (01:40:18):
He wants to have a say in the course of history,
so I don't think this is the last will hear
from him. But he needs to make sure those businesses
run because his credibility is built on businesses being successful.
If they fall over, then his credibility has gone and
any influence that he has it dissipates really quickly, and
he'll be patiently aware of that.

Speaker 2 (01:40:39):
All right, let's move on and talk about the fact
that farmers in the warehouse are giving body cameras to
staff after concerns of abusive customer behavior. And it's important
to not hear that these body cameras are only activated
if there's an incident taking place. But at the same time,
I kind of feel a little bit sad about this
is where we're at in society, that everything we kind

(01:41:00):
of do is filmed these days, either with you know,
people have dash cams, people have cameras on that homes.
People are now going to be you know, you go
into a shop to buy you know, now polished, and
you know there's a potential that you're going to be filmed.
I just I just feel it's sad that this is
where we've got.

Speaker 7 (01:41:17):
To irene I kind of hate it too, you know,
I quite frankly, I feel like I and everybody else
is getting filmed enough times already without you know, shops
and people with body cams. But having said that, the
other thing that's kind of troubling about anxiety at the
moment is how awful it is for retail workers et cetera,

(01:41:40):
et cetera, and how weird and angry everybody's got. And
so in the end, if this needs to happen for
their protection, then I think the rights of the workers
is my more paramount thought. But I am glad that
this has had a little bit of media attention just
so that you know, you just kind of keep an
eye on where these things are going in a civil liberty.

Speaker 2 (01:42:00):
Then, And it's also about making sure that they're just
being used to capture something if it's an incident Damien
as opposed to being used with facial recognition technology and
maybe you know like that you could you could what
they could potentially be used for could get bigger and
bigger and wider and wider.

Speaker 23 (01:42:19):
It's court.

Speaker 24 (01:42:20):
But I think that the immediate need for this is
driven by the fact that people have just become far
too rude. And we talk a lot about trust in
the media, but I think what this points to is
a lack of trust in society across the board. Because
if retail workers can't trust customers to treat them civilly,
that points to a bigger problem. If we're driving on

(01:42:41):
the road and we can't trust other drivers to be
reasonably polite, civil and decent, that points to a bigger problem.
So I think when you have that breakdown and trust
between people in a society, you need something that holds
people accountable.

Speaker 23 (01:42:55):
And that's what I think the camera comes down to here.

Speaker 24 (01:42:57):
It's just about holding people accountable saying, Look, if you're
going to do something dodgy, if you're going to be rude,
if you're going to be disgusting, if you're going to
be racist, it's going to get caught on camera. If
you're going to engage in road rage, it's gonna get
caught in camera, and you will be held accountable because
I think at the moment people realize, oh wait, I
can be held accountable for my actions, it lessens the
poor probability that they will engage in that activity.

Speaker 2 (01:43:20):
Damian Venuto, thank you so much for your time today.
Iron Gardner, good to catch up with you. Coming up
next to Jason Pine is with us to talk sport.

Speaker 1 (01:43:33):
It's the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin on News Talks at.

Speaker 22 (01:43:37):
B Joining me now is award winning sports broadcaster Jason Pine.

Speaker 2 (01:43:52):
Good morning.

Speaker 5 (01:43:53):
I was looking around for who you were talking about.
How are you now?

Speaker 2 (01:43:56):
With you also having to be one of the nicest
people in broadcasting as well, which I think I told
you several times after a few drinks on.

Speaker 26 (01:44:02):
Thursday, I enjoyed chatting with you, not just because you
were glazed me in such a consistent fashion.

Speaker 5 (01:44:08):
Now it was a good night, A good night for
the station. Look, I always enjoy it.

Speaker 26 (01:44:12):
And yeah, here we go, we go again, And obviously
rubbed off on the Warriors too, because what about that.

Speaker 2 (01:44:19):
Well look, okay, so I was flitting between Rugby and
the Warriors, and when I sit in, looked at the
Warriors versus the Sharks and it was very close. When
I came back, I just tuned it at the right
moment because we were just scoring trive to drive to try.
It was very.

Speaker 26 (01:44:33):
Exciting running right in the second half. Twenty eight unanswered
points in the second half, five of their seven tries
in the second half. This, of course, was without Mitch
Barnett out for the season, without White Egg and who
was ruled out on game day. No rocko'berry there last
night either, No problem. These young Warriors, oh oh, are
so exciting franchise. Honestly, I just love watching them play.

Speaker 2 (01:44:55):
Look, I know that thought goes into it, but there's
sort of a freedom in the way they play. They
just do it. I don't know, I don't know how
to describe it.

Speaker 26 (01:45:02):
No, you've described it perfectly. They're just unencumbered, right they Yes,
there's a plan and a structure they stick to and
they listen to the leaders and the team, I'm sure,
but they just play with a just a beautiful naivety
really and I just love watching Halla Sema and Vaimong.
And you know a couple of the guys last night,
you know Sam Heally his first start because Wade Egan,

(01:45:23):
like I say, ruled out on match day. They obviously
got around him. Very special day for him. So this
next man up mentality that clearly exists at this club.

Speaker 5 (01:45:31):
Look up.

Speaker 26 (01:45:33):
You know Andrew Webster's on the radio with us after midday,
so I'll ask him, but does he feel as though
this is the best performance and the launching pad He'll say, no, no, no,
still plenty of working to do. I'm sure that's what
he'll say. But I think we can get excited, so
you will open the lines of the Warriors as well.

Speaker 2 (01:45:47):
Second, on the NRL Ladder, where are we? Where are
we with this season? With this round?

Speaker 26 (01:45:52):
Thirteen thirteen games? They played God to buy next so
they get the two points there. Of course, that's the
one of the oddities of the NRL. You get two
points for the buy. So we'll get two points next week.
And then the Panthers, who of course have won the
last four NRL Grand Finals, but this year a struggling
just a bit. I mean, good luck getting a seat
in a fortnight's time out at go Media Stadium for

(01:46:13):
the Warriors against the Panthers.

Speaker 2 (01:46:14):
And it was a big night for the Blues. Jeeseus.
It was a pretty ugly game and they missed. They didn't,
you know, they didn't make the most of all the opportunities.
But they ground it out and won twenty nineteen against
the Chiefs to keep their Super Rugby alive.

Speaker 5 (01:46:30):
Yep, the Blues are alive. They stay alive, had to win.

Speaker 4 (01:46:32):
Of course.

Speaker 26 (01:46:33):
The vagaries of this final system is the Chiefs knew
that even if they lost, which they did, they still
host a semi final next week. What they have done, though,
is handed advantage for the Grand Final to the Crusaders.
So the Crusaders, the Red and Blacks, this juggern order
Super Rugby, if we take last year out of it. No,
they don't have to leave christ Church now to win
Super Rugby. They've got the Blues on Friday. That'll be tough,

(01:46:56):
and then should they win that, they'll host the Grand Final.
I think we all know how the story ends. I've
seen this one kind of do.

Speaker 2 (01:47:03):
But I thought I did last night as well. I
thought I knew how that story was going to end.
And then I'm like, Okay, if you want to leave
it to the last March to find form, let's go
for it. Let's just keep pushing hair Blues. But I
do send my commiserations. I know the Canes had a
tough night against the Brumbies in a good game.

Speaker 26 (01:47:20):
Yeah, that wasn't the I mean, I loved watching the Warriors, obviously.
I did enjoy the Blues Chief game. Because I've got
no skin in that game. I can watch it as
a as a neutral. But yeah, when I turned the
light out just before midnight having watched the Hurricanes elimination
at the hands of the brumbiesh yeah, I didn't sleep
particularly well.

Speaker 5 (01:47:37):
But you know, today's a new day. It's the sun
shining in the Capitol on Sory but they will be okay.

Speaker 2 (01:47:42):
And the All Whites are playing Ivory Coast in Canada.

Speaker 26 (01:47:45):
At the moment, they are twenty five minutes and no score. Yeah,
first time the Waites have played since earning qualification for
the World Cup back in March.

Speaker 5 (01:47:52):
So good to see them back on the track. Walkeep
eyes on that across the show.

Speaker 2 (01:47:55):
Just very quickly. I watched a little bit of French
Open over the weekend. I'm really excited to see Cocoa
golf when the women's but I was watching some of
the late finals there was no one there.

Speaker 26 (01:48:06):
Interesting Roland Garros say, it's a I don't know. I
mean I get I get all of the other majors.
I don't know whether I get the French Open necessarily.
You're right, it's sometimes I just find that the ball
very hard to see.

Speaker 5 (01:48:17):
I'm sure it's different when you're there. You know, it's
the clay in my aging eyes.

Speaker 2 (01:48:21):
Frenches glasses on te okay, looking forward to the show
at midday. Jason Pine will be back.

Speaker 3 (01:48:28):
Then.

Speaker 2 (01:48:28):
It is seventeen to twelve.

Speaker 1 (01:48:32):
The Sunday Session full show podcast on iHeartRadio powered by
News Talks b.

Speaker 2 (01:48:38):
It is fifteen to twelve. Joining me now, Meghan single ten,
blogger at large dot com. Good morning, Good morning. You're
thinking about the school holidays and how we can entertain
the kids.

Speaker 14 (01:48:48):
I reckon I've really come up with a pearla. So
I've been playing around with creating scavenger hunts or treasure
hunts using AI and based on the destination that you
might be going to. So I did one go to
AI program of choice. I've been using chat GPT and
then I wrote in, you know, give me twenty fun

(01:49:12):
things you'll find in Rotor Ua for a selfie treasure hunt. Right,
And so then it just as it comes up with
all these things you can go and do, and then
you might want a few more and stuff, and then
you can print them out, which I think is great fun.

Speaker 13 (01:49:25):
And then I thought, well it doesn't just you have
to be for the kids.

Speaker 14 (01:49:28):
So then because I've got this popular post on Nashville,
and you know, Nashville was just filled with Hen's party
weekends and all sorts of things. So I'm now thinking,
how fun would it be to just use your AI
to go, please come up with a list of, you know,
twenty things to do in Nashville for a bachelorette party.
And it's come up with them sorts of things like
get a photo of a stranger with the cowboy hat

(01:49:50):
proposing to the bride, and ride a mechanical bull and
all sorts of things. So yeah, so I've got I've
got a couple that I put up there already. I've
put rot Aurura online in a post and I'm working
on an Irish one and Nashville will be the next one.
But I just thought it's easy for parents to do.
Go to AI, create a little funzie list and then

(01:50:12):
even just for a road trip, kind of like ice
spiber on paper, you know, a really good way to
fill in a bit of time.

Speaker 11 (01:50:18):
I thought on your next trip.

Speaker 21 (01:50:19):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:50:20):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:50:20):
Roth is very popular with families, isn't it.

Speaker 14 (01:50:23):
Yes, so you could do things like find a Mary
carving and I say take pictures, you know, make it
into a selfie thing. Then the whole family can be
part of it, you know, find photo of the luge,
someone on an e scooter, find the gene Batton statue,
you know, the redwood trees. I mean, I think you
could have a lot of fun and something like this.
I think I'm actually really really loving creating them.

Speaker 2 (01:50:44):
To do that is a brilliant idea. So if you
head to blogger at large dot com you'll be able
to see the ones.

Speaker 22 (01:50:48):
That you've created, you will. Yes, excellent idea. I love
it as twelve to twelve.

Speaker 2 (01:50:55):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:50:56):
Meghan Books with Wiggles for the Best Election of Grape reads.

Speaker 2 (01:51:02):
Johny McKenzie is with us now, good morning. You know
The Names by Florence Knapp. Tell me about this well.

Speaker 19 (01:51:10):
It's a really clever, interesting book which essentially looks at
how our names shape our history. And it's about a
woman named Cora and her husband, Gordon, who's a really
successful and highly respected doctor, although he is constantly belittled
by his father, who was an eminent surgeon and always
felt that Gordon had failed by not following in his
footsteps because he's only a doctor, not a surgeon, and

(01:51:32):
that's had some impacts on his character. So Gordon is
great in the community and he's terrible at home, where
things go on behind closed doors. And Cora, his wife,
is small and petite. Before her marriage, she was a
ballet dancer and she lives in fear, and some of
this book is about what living in that kind of
environment is like. So I will say that there are

(01:51:54):
some dark themes to.

Speaker 2 (01:51:55):
It, but it's very clever.

Speaker 19 (01:51:57):
It opens just after she's given birth to a baby boy,
and she takes her nine year old daughter Maya and
heads off to register the birth. Now, Gordon's made it
very clear that this baby is to be named after him,
and on the way to the registry office, Maya says,
I think we should call him Bear, and Cora herself
the baby's mother really wants to call him Julian, but

(01:52:19):
she knows that if she goes against her husband Gordon,
things are not going to go well for her. And
the novel then moves in seven year increments and follows
this baby through until he's thirty five. And there are
three parallel strands in which each in each of which
the boy is given a different name. So in part
of the book is called Gordon, and part of the

(01:52:40):
book is called Bear, and in part he's called Julia.

Speaker 2 (01:52:43):
Is that the perspective of those people that wanted to
call him those names.

Speaker 19 (01:52:46):
Well, it's what happens to a baby born into those
circumstances where there is a choice about which name he
might be given, and what the impact of that name
the subsequent environment has on the child.

Speaker 2 (01:52:59):
Hmm.

Speaker 19 (01:52:59):
It's clever. It's a big buzz book overseas. It was
trailed to me months and months and months ago. A
lot of people very excited about it, and I think
it's very clever and well done.

Speaker 2 (01:53:10):
Okay, interesting now, I had the pleasure recently of meeting
raynall Wynn interviewed her all on the Sunday Session. She
was just delightful, of course, the author of The Salt
Path and various other books being turned into the movie
which everybody's enjoying starring Jason Isaacs and Jillian Anderson. And
you're going to talk about the book I am.

Speaker 19 (01:53:29):
It was first published in twenty eighteen, so it's not new,
but of course movies give books a whole new life,
and that's what happened with this one. And anyone who
heard that interview will know that it's the true story
of raynal Wynn and her husband, who's known is Moth,
who found themselves destitute and homeless in their fifties after
an investment with a friend of Moths goes terribly, terribly

(01:53:53):
wrong and it's all dragged through the courts and they
lose everything, absolutely everything, and it's complicated by the fact
that Moth has an incurable illness and so he's not
well and they have no so they decide that they'll
go walking, and they settle on a path which is
more than six hundred miles on the Southwest Coast path,

(01:54:15):
it's called in the UK, which goes from Somerset to
Dorset for people who know the geography, and it takes
you through Devon and Cornwall, so some pretty spectacular parts
of the world. And they had to carry lightweight packs
because they know they weren't that fit or that you know,
ready to adapt to the outdoors. So they've got unsuitable,
flimsy sleeping bags and a lightweight tent which isn't that

(01:54:37):
good and literally no money. They could buy one pot
of tea and share it between them. From time to
time they could afford a packet of chips, but mostly
they lived on noodles. It's like your student life come
back to visit you in your fifties, and it was
arduous and exhausting, but they didn't have anywhere else they
had to be. There was nowhere else they really could

(01:54:58):
be because they had nowhere to live, and they just
kept going until they realized that actually there was almost
nowhere else they'd rather be.

Speaker 2 (01:55:05):
And it's the.

Speaker 19 (01:55:06):
Story of the making of two people through extraordinary courage
and endurance and finding themselves in the process.

Speaker 2 (01:55:13):
That's The Salt Path by Ray Norwyn and the first
book that Joan spoke about was the Names by Florence Nap.
Thank you so much, See you next week.

Speaker 1 (01:55:22):
The Sunday Session Full show podcast on iHeartRadio powered by
News talks'b.

Speaker 22 (01:55:29):
Thank you so much for joining us this morning on
the Sunday Session.

Speaker 2 (01:55:33):
Good to have you with us. Stick around. Andrew Webster
is up next on Weekend Sport with Jason bind Thank
you very much to my producer Kirie Shaw, who was
nominated for Producer of the Year this year at the
Radio Warts on Thursday night. We think she got the
fan Favorite award. To be honest, she was robbed. She
lost it out to the mind Cosking team, but really
she was robbed. She should have won remarkable producer. We

(01:55:56):
are going to finish with some spice skills for a reason.
David Beckham is to be made a night in King
Charles's birthday last He's going to take the title Sir
and wife Victoria. We'll become Lady Bacon. So maybe with
a little bit of Lady Bacon. Enjoy the rest of
your Sunday. I'll see you next week.

Speaker 27 (01:56:21):
Shah Shu Shu Shu.

Speaker 1 (01:57:12):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin listen
live to news Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio

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