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The top stories and other headlines at midday

Playwright and director Stuart McKenzie has spent more than three decades turning real lives and conversations into theatre, and his latest work AFTER GOD brings together two of his lifelong interests: theatre and the question of belief Stuart is the son of an Anglican minister and studied comparative religion at Cambridge and, has been circling the question of God ever since. For AFTER GOD he tra...

Clinical psychologist and broadcaster Nigel Latta left a lasting mark on New Zealand with his practical, no-nonsense approach to life's challenges. Now, his final book has informed Lessons on Living, a new three-part documentary series hosted by Married At First Sight Australia resident expert John Aiken. Through personal stories, candid conversations and thought-provoking social experiments, the...

Bonnie Harrison is here guiding us through the latest weird and useful headlines from the world of science including the decline of the dinner party, the benefit of a cup of tea for older women, and whether animals gloat.

Motoring journalist and editor of car guide Driven, Dean Evans joins Jim once again, this time to discuss the chances of suffering from motion sickness in an EV, whether shared lanes for cyclists and motorists are safe, and how loud is too loud for an exhaust.

After years of writing bestselling rom-coms, Sarah-Kate Lynch has taken a darker turn. Fresh from writing television thrillers, including the ThreeNow hit Friends Like Her, she's released her debut crime novel, Something He Did, under the name S.K. Lynch. Now based in Melbourne, Sarah-Kate says the book was inspired by a split-second act of road rage on a gridlocked street. She joins Jim to discus...

As temperatures rise and gardens burst into bloom, insects are re-emerging for spring. While pollinators like butterflies and bees are welcome visitors, other winged pests are far less popular. After a $12 million eradication campaign, the Ministry for Primary Industries is closely monitoring this spring "queening" season to make sure the yellow-legged hornet is gone for good. But vespula wasps ar...

Actor and inventor Augusta Xu-Holland has lived in China, on-and-off for 13 years. After a stint in Beijing in the north, she's currently based in the south - in Guangzhou - population 18.5 million. She joins Jim to talk about her work in product development for women's health, and the views she has from her balcony.

Our regular quiz artist is taking a break so Jim is joined by RNZ's lead scheduler Nick Robinson, who moonlights as a pub quiz master. Wake up your brain and have a go!

Would you trade some of your salary for an extra day off every week? Nearly half of New Zealanders say yes, according to new research from Revolut and YouGov. The survey found 59% Kiwis work overtime, but often without extra compensation. Yet 44% of us say we would take a pay cut in exchange for one extra day off every week. Ironically, much of our so-called free time is now being spent keeping fi...

This morning's top stories and other headlines

A wrap of the day's big stories

Coming up on Tagata o te Moana: World leaders meet in Fiji and Tuvalu for PRECOP31; The Pacific's first independent fact-checking website is launched; We ask what does independence look like for French Polynesia? And New Zealand celebrates Fiji Language Week. All that and more stories from the week at RNZ Pacific.

All the top stories and other headlines from the day

Levi Armstrong is a co-founder of the Meke Foundation in Hawkes Bay which strives to improve people's health and wellbeing. He helped to create portable fitness pods from shipping containers to improve access to fitness facilities, especially for people in more remote areas. Now he's teamed up with City Fitness which is the country’s largest gym chain. It has funded two $65,000 Hawke’s Bay pods wh...

A major new report released this week called Te Pūrongo Whakaweawe o te Mahi Taiohi, Telling the Story of Youth Work through Social Return on Investment finds that each year youth work creates one-point-seven billion dollars of social value for young people in Aotearoa. Georgia Richards was one of the report's writers and explains they compared what’s invested with the estimated value of the chang...

Last week the Electoral Commission said that just 62-percent of 18 to 24-year-olds were enrolled to vote, while only around half of eligible young Maori were enrolled. Now a major new report released this week called Te Purongo Whakaweawe o te Mahi Taiohi, finds there is a massive upside around working with young people that might grab the attention of our nation's leaders. The peak body for youth...

The top stories and other headlines at midday

Biologist Wayne Linklater on tracking the wild horses of the Kaimanawa Ranges

Is it really worth putting all your money into property or is there another way to protect your investments? Accountant and "Keep the Change" podcaster Luke Kemeys is on a mission to make Kiwis rethink their attitude to money and will take our listeners questions on financial literacy.

Matty Blomfield, CEO at Hectre knows all about the hard yards of start-ups having led his agritech company to being a globally recognised business that uses AI to identify the best apples among many other things. He popped in to tell us how he did it.

The Lizzie Borden story gripped the world and has haunted folklore since as a kind of grisly pre-cursor of the worldwide fascination with true crime. The story is back in the spotlight with Netflix's Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, a fictional retelling of events that's been accused of sensationalism and playing fast and loose with what really happened. To do a bit of a fact check, we've got his...

The latest update to the Oxford English Dictionary adds a suite of words commonly used in New Zealand - including both unique colloquialisms and words from Te Reo Maori. World English editor Danica Salazar joins Kate to talk about the changing face of Kiwi English, and the colonial mechanisms behind how our languages grow.

The Cornell 7 case has sparked anger at the justice system, privilege and fraternity culture. It's also prompting a deeper conversation about boys and young men. How are attitudes towards women formed? What role do parents play? And how do we raise boys who won't stay silent when others cross the line? A psychologist joins us to discuss the lessons parents and society should be taking from this tr...

Australian-based demographer Simon Kuestenmacher makes an art out of tracking the demographic shifts of the world, and he's been taking a detailed look at what the workplace of the near-future will look like as four generations share the open-plan office and have to find a way to communicate.