A 24-hour recording of RNZ National. The following rundown is sourced from the broadcaster’s website. Note some overseas/copyright restricted items may not appear in the supplied rundown:
26 April 2016
===12:04 AM. | All Night Programme===
=DESCRIPTION=
Including: 12:05 Music after Midnight; 12:30 Spectrum (RNZ); 1:05 From the World (RNZ); 2:05 New Jazz Archive (9 of 12, PRX) 3:05 The Godley Letters read by Ginette McDonald and Sam Neill (5 of 10, RNZ); 3:30 An Author's View (RNZ); 5:10 Witness (BBC)
===6:00 AM. | Morning Report===
=DESCRIPTION=
RNZ's three-hour breakfast news show with news and interviews, bulletins on the hour and half-hour, including: 6:16 and 6:50 Business News 6:18 Pacific News 6:26 Rural News 6:48 and 7:45 NZ Newspapers
=AUDIO=
06:00
Top Stories for Tuesday 26 April 2016
BODY:
Could a land tax be imposed on foreigners buying residential homes here? We have the Treasury report into whether Auckland Council can afford to fast track infrastructure to support new houses and the Government falls behind on its goal for 90 percent renewable electricity by 2025.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 29'34"
06:06
Sports News for 26 April 2016
BODY:
An update from the team at RNZ Sport.
Topics: sport
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 1'33"
06:09
30 year anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster
BODY:
Today marks the 30 year anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident, the Chernobyl disaster.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags: Russia
Duration: 4'00"
06:13
Doubts Govt can meet renewable energy target
BODY:
The Climate Change Minister, Paula Bennett, may have jumped the gun by telling a global forum New Zealand is on track to generate 90 percent of its electricity from renewable sources.
Topics: climate, politics
Regions:
Tags: climate change
Duration: 1'54"
06:17
Stalemate over probe into PNG fraud case
BODY:
Papua New Guinea's police anti-fraud squad remains unable to access its office and files amid a standoff over a major corruption case.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags: Papua New Guinea, PNG
Duration: 2'34"
06:20
Early Business News for 26 April 2016
BODY:
A brief update of movements in the financial sector.
Topics: business, economy
Regions:
Tags: markets
Duration: 2'11"
06:25
Morning Rural News for 26 April 2016
BODY:
News from the rural and farming sectors.
Topics: rural, farming
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 4'11"
06:36
Peters says Key not being serious
BODY:
The New Zealand First leader, Winston Peters, says John Key's suggestion of a land tax for foreign buyers the Government might look at taxing land bought by overseas residents is a joke.
Topics: politics
Regions:
Tags: foreign buyers
Duration: 2'45"
06:46
Residents relieved after Kokiri stand off
BODY:
Residents on the street where a man was found dead after a weekend siege in Porirua are relieved that no one else was hurt during the incident.
Topics: crime
Regions: Wellington Region
Tags: Pita Te Kira
Duration: 1'48"
06:50
RBNZ to leave cash rate unchanged
BODY:
The big event this week is the Reserve Bank's review of the official cash rate on Thursday.
Topics: business, economy
Regions:
Tags: RBNZ, Reserve Bank
Duration: 3'07"
06:53
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare head brings continuity to top job
BODY:
The new head of Fisher & Paykel Healthcare says he brings continuity to the top job, as the healthcare appliance manufacturer aims to double in size every five years.
Topics: business
Regions:
Tags: Fisher & Paykel Healthcare
Duration: 2'14"
06:55
Jim Parker in Australia
BODY:
In Australia, Jim Parker reports the country's embattled banks have pledged to clean up their act after a run of scandals that have sparked calls for a royal commission into the industry.
Topics: business
Regions:
Tags: Australia
Duration: 1'57"
06:57
Week ahead
BODY:
On the economic agenda, as we heard earlier, the Reserve Bank cash rate review is on Thursday, before then we'll have overseas merchandise trade for March out tomorrow.
Topics: business
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 56"
06:58
Morning markets
BODY:
Wall Street weaker today amid low oil prices, weak earnings reports and the scheduled meeting of the Federal Reserve.
Topics: business, economy
Regions:
Tags: markets
Duration: 58"
06:59
Business briefs
BODY:
The Saudi cabinet has approved economic reforms which aim to move the country away from its dependence on oil profits.
Topics: business
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 22"
07:06
Sports News for 26 April 2016
BODY:
An update from the team at RNZ Sport.
Topics: sport
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 1'30"
07:10
Government may consider imposing land tax on foreigners
BODY:
The Government will consider imposing a land tax on foreigners buying residential homes if new data due out soon reveals there's a problem
Topics: politics
Regions:
Tags: land tax
Duration: 3'07"
07:14
Treasury fails to find easy answers for Auckland housing crisis
BODY:
The Government's failed to find any easy new answers to Auckland's housing crisis, after getting Treasury to cast an eye over Auckland council's finances
Topics: housing
Regions: Auckland Region
Tags: Treasury
Duration: 3'34"
07:17
Hopes fade of 90 percent renewable electricity goal
BODY:
Hopes are fading that New Zealand will reach its goal of having 90 per cent renewable electricity by 2025.
Topics: technology, climate, politics
Regions:
Tags: climate change
Duration: 3'10"
07:21
Cruz and Kasick join forces against Trump
BODY:
Two bitter rivals have teamed up in an effort to stop Donald Trump becoming the republican nominee for the President of the United States.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags: US, Trump
Duration: 4'44"
07:25
Prince's drug dealer reveals opiate addiction
BODY:
A man claiming to have dealt drugs to superstar Prince says the singer battled with an addiction to powerful opiates for more than 25 years.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags: US, Prince
Duration: 4'25"
07:33
Manhunt for shooter who killed eight in Ohio
BODY:
The manhunt continues for whoever killed eight people in a rural Ohio town.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags: US
Duration: 3'48"
07:37
US sends team to discuss NZ TPP obligations
BODY:
The United States is sending officials to New Zealand to look at how the country will put its obligations under the Trans Pacific Partnership into practice.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags: US, TPP
Duration: 3'12"
07:42
Labour urges crackdown on speculation: not a land tax
BODY:
Labour maintains the best way to discourage foreign property buyers is to ban them.
Topics: politics
Regions:
Tags: land tax
Duration: 5'20"
07:47
30th anniversary of the Chernobyl explosion
BODY:
Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl explosion - the biggest nuclear disaster in history.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags: Russia
Duration: 2'55"
07:52
Temporary migrants struggle to stay in New Zealand
BODY:
Temporary migrants fighting to build a life in New Zealand say it can take them years and cost them thousands of dollars to convince Immigration officials they should be allowed to stay.
Topics: refugees and migrants
Regions:
Tags: temporary migrants
Duration: 3'27"
07:55
Australasian push is on to develop a single trans-Tasman visa
BODY:
The push is on to bring Australia and New Zealand even closer - with a single trans-Tasman visa.
Topics: law
Regions:
Tags: visas, Australia
Duration: 3'35"
08:06
Sports News for 26 April 2016
BODY:
An update from the team at RNZ Sport.
Topics: sport
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 2'12"
08:11
PM's idea of land tax seen as a good one: but should go further
BODY:
A tax specialist thinks the idea of a land tax should be applied to all land buyers, not just foreigners.
Topics: politics
Regions:
Tags: land tax
Duration: 4'54"
08:15
Renewable electricity target a tough ask
BODY:
Hopes are fading that New Zealand will reach its goal of having 90 percent of electricity coming from renewable sources by 2025.
Topics: energy, climate, politics
Regions:
Tags: climate change
Duration: 4'09"
08:20
Warning as Government consider extradition treaty with China.
BODY:
As China's crack down on corruption continues the New Zealand government is considering entering into a formal extradition treaty with it.
Topics: politics
Regions:
Tags: China
Duration: 4'12"
08:24
Will Key's visit to China see trade improvements?
BODY:
The Prime Minister's trip to China last week saw doors being opened for our chilled meat exporters and a fifty million dollar deal for Amway China's elite salespeople to visit Queenstown.
Topics: politics, farming
Regions:
Tags: China, Fta
Duration: 3'23"
08:27
Canadian hostage killed in the Philippines
BODY:
A Canadian hostage has been killed in the Philippines by a terror group affiliated to ISIS
Topics:
Regions:
Tags: Philippines
Duration: 5'25"
08:33
Markets Update for 26 April 2016
BODY:
A brief update of movements in the financial sector.
Topics: business, economy
Regions:
Tags: markets
Duration: 51"
08:38
Hillsborough inquest verdict due out later today
BODY:
The jury hearing an inquest into the deaths of 96 people in the Hillsborough football stadium disaster 27 years ago is expected to deliver its verdict later today.
Topics: sport
Regions:
Tags: Hillsborough, UK
Duration: 3'07"
08:45
Hayden Paddon's historic win 'huge'
BODY:
Rally New Zealand has hailed driver Hayden Paddon a 'hero' for wining the weekend's Rally Argentina.
Topics: sport
Regions:
Tags: Hayden Paddon
Duration: 4'21"
08:50
Christchurch's Bridge of Remembrance reopens
BODY:
People can walk over Christchurch's Bridge of Remembrance once again, after nearly seven million dollars in earthquake repairs.
Topics: history
Regions: Canterbury
Tags: Bridge Of Remembrance, Christchurch
Duration: 3'27"
08:54
New London restaurant to open up in June encourages nude dining
BODY:
Care for a Rump steak with those fries? 'The Bunyadi' will be the first London restaurant to encourage naked dining when it opens in June.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags: London restaurant, UK
Duration: 2'42"
08:56
Phil Kafcaloudes with news from Australia
BODY:
Time to chat to our Melbourne correspondent Phil Kafcaloudes.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags: Australia
Duration: 2'56"
=SHOW NOTES=
===9:06 AM. | Nine To Noon===
=DESCRIPTION=
Current affairs and topics of interest, including:
10:45 The Reading: Shackleton's Boat Journey by Captain Frank W. Worsley, read by Peter Elliot
An epic story of survival in Antarctic waters early in the 20th century told by the Akaroa-born master of Shackleton's ill-fated expedition ship, Endurance (7 of 10, RNZ)
(Unfortunately the audio for this Reading is not available online)
=AUDIO=
09:09
Funding woes for NZ's most difficult students
BODY:
Alternative Education providers deal with the country's most difficult students, many of whom have been repeatedly excluded from school, but they receive 10-15 percent less government funding per student than an ordinary school. Kathryn Ryan speaks to Judy Bruce - a senior lecturer in education at Canterbury University and Sarah Longbottom the founder and director of Nga Rangatahi Toa - an Auckland-based alternative education provider specialising in creative arts.
EXTENDED BODY:
Alternative education centres say they are under funded and need more support so they can provide a better education to at-risk teenagers.
A senior lecturer in education at Canterbury University, Judy Bruce, and director of an alternative education centre for at-risk teenagers, Sarah Longbottom, told Nine to Noon that most alternative education programmes could not afford registered teachers.
About 3500 students a year enrol in alternative education after being excluded from school or because of long-term truancy.
She said the government provided about 40 to 60 percent of alternative education funding, with the remainder coming from charities.
Ms Longbottom, founder and director of Auckland alternative education provider Nga Rangatahi Toa, said organisations such as her's were good at helping teens emotionally and socially, but they needed more government funding so they could provide a better education.
"They're successful at enabling kids to want to turn up and want to be engaged, but where we're falling short is again once we've got the kids to that point, we then need to have expert, amazing educators in those classrooms educating those kids so they can move out of poverty and inspiring their whanau to as well."
Dr Bruce said the state of alternative education was a disgrace.
"It's an appalling, disgraceful situation, actually. And the lack of quality provision is a disgrace. Not only that it's really unsafe often environment for staff and for students because they're under so much stress, they're working often in crisis situations and they're just not equipped to deal with this."
Dr Bruce said alternative education programmes needed qualified, experienced teachers who received extra training to work with vulnerable young people.
Related stories
Topics: education, inequality
Regions:
Tags: Alternative Education, school
Duration: 26'04"
09:34
Equal pay for equal play
BODY:
Five top women US soccer players have filed a wage-discrimination complaint, saying they are earning less despite outperforming their male counterparts.
EXTENDED BODY:
Five top women US soccer players have filed a wage-discrimination complaint, saying they are earning less despite outperforming their male counterparts in both total revenue and tournament wins.
The players, including co-captains Carli Lloyd and Becky Sauerbrunn, allege the women's team is being being short-changed on everything from bonuses and appearance fees to travel and accommodation.
New York city lawyer Eva Cole, who was helping in the complaint process, said there was no structural reason for women to be paid less.
"There is no structure of compensation that ties the revenues that the men or women are driving to how much money they get," she said.
"They get paid to play soccer, both the men and the women. And the women are getting paid dramatically less to do the same job.
And despite outperforming the men - both in the number of tournament wins and revenue pulled in for the association.
"The women are actually major drivers of revenue, the women's game is the game everybody follows in the US, they get major television support, they get major appearances by audience members at actual tournaments and games, and they really drive the revenues, and the soccer federation's own revenue numbers make that very clear."
Indeed, the women's team was finding much greater success on the world stage than the men - the US women's team having won world and Olympic championships, while the men's team had given a relatively mediocre performance in international competitions.
"Just by way of example, in 2015 the men's team earned $9 million as a team for losing in the [World Cup] round of 16, while the women's team earned $2 million for being world champions."
And that was no fluke.
"We're not cherry-picking - if you look at the four-year average, the women have overall greater average revenue than the men, number one. Number two if you look at the USSF revenue projections for future years, the women are significantly outpacing the men."
She said their performance and revenue contributions were not central to their argument anyway.
"We have mentioned the revenue issues more frankly as just an example that the women are very successful, but I think as I said at the outset, it's almost irrelevant for purposes of the legal standard. The legal standard is very simple - equal pay for equal work."
Ms Cole said the pay disparity was evident at every level of compensation.
"The compensation structure is actually somewhat complicated, it's not a simple salary or a simple bonus structure. There are different ways in which both the men and women are compensated depending on the level of competition, the type of game they're playing.
"But really the pay disparity trickles down to each of those levels and the women are paid significantly less than the men.
"With respect to the friendly game, women players get anywhere between 38 and 72 percent of the compensation the men players earn on a per-game basis.
"So the women in fact get less if they win each of those games than the men get if they lose each of those games."
"The world cup compensation differences are even bigger, women players get $30,000 for trying out and making the world cup team roster, and the men get more than twice that - they basically get $68,000 for getting on the roster.
It was also not down to a difference in the clubs - both teams belonged to the same national association, the United States Soccer Federation, which was the employer for both teams.
She said such a complaint, which she made clear was not a law suit, had never previously been taken to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) regarding soccer.
However, the women were very passionate about the cause, she said.
"There's a consistent pay disparity between all types of work in the United States and you know, the women believe that this is their moment, this is their cause and they should really set this example and set the stage in this context."
The investigation could take a minimum of six months, she said, and the EEOC would take its time to make sure it had all the facts, so they weren't expecting any kind of very quick action.
There were also negotiations under way for a collective bargaining agreement.
Related stories:
Topics: sport, law
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 9'38"
09:47
US correspondent Susan Milligan
BODY:
Latest on the US presidential elections.
Topics: politics
Regions:
Tags: US, US correspondent
Duration: 11'53"
10:09
Author Chris Cleave on his grandparents' wartime letters
BODY:
British author and journalist Chris Cleave's book Everyone Brave is Forgiven is inspired by the hundreds of letters, telegrams and postcards his grandfather, Captain David Hill - trapped in Malta - sent to his then-fiancee Mary - Chris Cleave's grandmother, who was in London.
EXTENDED BODY:
British author Chris Cleave moved to Malta for three months, living on war rations and sleeping where his grandfather was billetted during WWII for his new book Everyone Brave is Forgiven.
The novel is inspired by the hundreds of letters, telegrams and postcards his grandfather Captain David Hill – trapped in Malta – sent to his then-fiancée Mary, who was in London.
But Chris knew that writing the book would require more than just reading the letters and doing historical research – he wanted to experience life as his grandfather had during the Siege of Malta.
Interview highlights:
On his grandparents' love story:
You get my grandparents aged 19 and 20 – very, very young – at the beginning of the war and still very young – 25, 26 – at the end of that war. So first of all they’re these very tender letters between young people who are falling more and more in love at a time when the world is really falling apart… It was a strange time to fall in love and it was a strange time to come of age, in a world where nothing was certain.
In their letters you see this trembling uncertainty that’s marked by these expressions of great tenderness and frequent outbursts of humour, and that’s what I loved about them, really. They had this great tenderness and joy, and I realised that that generation were able to endure not just because they were tough, but also because they had a kind of tenderness and a faith in each other that helped them through.
On letter writing:
You’d pour your whole heart and soul into these letters and you’d really hope that they got through. Whereas these days we’re very good at communicating but we have this very high frequency and low intensity kind of communication, which isn’t a bad thing - but I also think we’ve missed something when we stop writing a very tender and personal letter and sealing it into an envelope. And there’s that excitement when a letter arrives from someone who really means something to you. And you open it and pull out this folded paper.
It bears so much of them, their actual handwriting. Their hand formed this letter. It might even smell of their perfume or their pipe smoke. And just for that moment – 20 minutes or however long it takes you to read the thing – you’re there with them.
On his diet of war rations:
I put myself on home front rations for three months. What I discovered was not what I expected. I expected to be hungry. Actually, I wasn’t. I was able to find stuff that would have been available that I could eat.
I was really surprised by how much I didn’t want to eat some of the things that were on the ration. There were 2.5 ounces of lard, for example, which I found really hard to stomach. There were four ounces of heavy margarine… There was suet.
On the other hand there were things that were a real treat. You were allowed a little one-pound jar of jam every two months, which became an incredible treat. But you were only allowed one egg a week, which is almost nothing.
So it wasn’t so that much that I was hungry, but I was badly nourished. There was no fruit… It was possible to endure on the rations, but it was very hard to continue to feel joy. And that’s what led me, again, to a greater understanding and a greater admiration for the sense of humour that that generation maintained through the adversity.
Topics: history, author interview
Regions:
Tags: WWII
Duration: 32'09"
10:41
Book review - The Crow Girl by Erik Axl Sund
BODY:
Reviewed by Ralph McAllister, published by Penguin Random House.
Topics: books
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 4'16"
11:06
Political commentators Mike Williams and Lewis Holden
BODY:
Changes in the China FTA agreement and a requested extradition treaty. A land tax. Housing issues in Auckland. A price on water?
Topics: politics
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 24'45"
11:31
Vanilla grower Jennifer Boggiss
BODY:
Tauranga based co- founder of Heilalala Vanilla, Jennifer Boggiss, talks to Kathryn about producing the delicate flavouring derived from the orchids of the vanilla flower.
EXTENDED BODY:
Heilala Vanilla is a New Zealand-run company whose vanilla crop is grown in Tonga, where the company has forged close ties with the community.
Vanilla is a delicate flavoring used in baking and cooking derived from the orchids of Vanilla flower, and its fragrance varies according to where it is grown.
Recipes:
Slow cooked beef with vanilla and capsicum
Roasted coconut vanilla pears
Jennifer Boggiss' family started the Heilala Vanilla company in 2002 and still own and operate the business today.
Before 2002, John Ross was a retired dairy farmer, Jennifer Boggiss (his daughter) was an accountant and Garth Boggiss (Jennifer's husband) worked in IT. They worked a dormant piece of land in Utungake, Tonga gifted to them by the local village, but little did they know at the time that the piece of land was destined to lead to something much bigger.
John and Garth put to practice their horticultural know how to kick start the plantation by researching countries around the world that grew vanilla in the narrow band 20 degrees on each side of the equator.
The plan was to help to provide the locals with employment and hope that the demand for vanilla blossomed.
It then took three years to develop and nurture the vines through the on-going art of careful training, weeding and looping, all while ensuring organic sustainable farming was being practiced.
John who was once a frequent holiday maker to Tonga is now virtually a local spending up to six months a year at the plantation.
In 2005 the first 40kg harvest of vanilla beans was ready. Time passed, the plantation went from strength to strength harvesting a healthy two tonnes in 2010.
An annual crop is brought back from Tonga to the company's base in Tauranga, New Zealand. Heilala Vanilla is then packaged for each order; the Pure Extract and Vanilla Paste, Syrup and vanilla bean sugar are manufactured, and dispatched to chefs, gourmet food manufacturers and a selection of specialty retail outlets, including Moore Wilson's.
The practice of true sustainability with the local villages and growers is very important to Heilala and has enabled resources for education and infrastructure, which the communities otherwise may not have had.
Heilala Vanilla is grown using organic principles in organic virgin soil, on coconut husk frames, hand pollinated and dried under the Pacific Sun, then stored at optimum conditions to ensure full flavour develops. This is what gives 100 percent Pure Heilala Vanilla (of the Bourbon variety) its distinctive aroma, shine and plumpness.
Then brought back to Tauranga for processing into Pure Extract and Vanilla Paste, Syrup and vanilla bean sugar.
Topics: food
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 10'35"
11:45
Media commentator Gavin Ellis
BODY:
Gavin Ellis is a media commentator and former editor of the New Zealand Herald. He can be contacted on gavin.ellis@xtra.co.nz
Topics: media
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 14'06"
=SHOW NOTES=
09:05 Funding woes for NZ's most difficult students
Alternative Education providers deal with the country's most difficult students, many of whom have been repeatedly excluded from school, but they receive 10-15% less government funding per student than an ordinary school. Kathryn speaks to Judy Bruce - a senior lecturer in education at Canterbury University and Sarah Longbottom the founder and director of Nga Rangatahi Toa - an Auckland-based alternative education provider specialising in creative arts.
09:30 Equal pay for equal play
[image:65868:third]
Five top women US soccer players have filed a wage-discrimination complaint against the sport's governing body.
The players, including co-captains Carli Lloyd and Becky Sauerbrunn, allege the women's team are being are being shortchanged on everything from bonuses and appearance fees to travel and accomodation. Eva Cole is one of the New York city lawyers taking the case on behalf of the women soccer players.
09:45 US correspondent Susan Milligan
10:05 Author Chris Cleave on his grandparents war time letters
When British author and journalist Chris Cleave decided to base his latest novel on his own grandparents experience during the siege of Malta, he knew it would take more than just reading their letters and doing historical research. He wanted to experience life as his grandfather had during the siege - so he moved to Malta for 3 months, living on war rations, sleeping where his grandfather had been billetted, and interviewing older islanders who had lived through the second World War.
The siege of Malta took place between 1940 and 1942, with Germany and Italy fighting for control of the strategically important island - against the British airforce and navy.
Chris Cleave's book Everyone Brave is Forgiven, is inspired by the hundreds of letters, telegrams and postcards his grandfather, Captain David Hill - trapped in Malta - sent to his then fiancée Mary - Chris Cleave's grandmother, who was in London.
[gallery:1926]
10:35 Book review - The Crow Girl by Erik Axl Sund
Reviewed by: Ralph McAllister, published by Penguin Random House
10:45 The Reading: Shackleton's Boat Journey by Captain Frank W. Worsley
Read by Peter Elliot (Part 7 of 10)
Note: The audio of the current 10.45am Reading is not available online.
11:05 Political commentators Mike Williams and Lewis Holden
11:30 Vanilla grower Jennifer Boggiss
Tauranga based co- founder of Heilalala Vanilla, Jennifer Boggiss, talks to Kathryn about producing the delicate flavouring derived from the orchids of the vanilla flower.
[gallery:1961]
Recipes:
Slow cooked beef with vanilla and and capsicum
Roasted coconut vanilla pears
11:45 Media commentator Gavin Ellis
Gavin Ellis is a media commentator and former editor of the New Zealand Herald. He can be contacted on gavin.ellis@xtra.co.nz
=PLAYLIST=
Artist: Boy & Bear
Song: Limit of Love
Composer: n/a
Album: Limit of Love
Label: Universal
Time: 09:45
Artist: Moniker
Song: Ocean Blue
Album: Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Label: Majestical
Time: 11:44
===Noon | Midday Report===
=DESCRIPTION=
RNZ news, followed by updates and reports until 1.00pm, including: 12:16 Business News 12:26 Sport 12:34 Rural News 12:43 Worldwatch
=AUDIO=
12:00
Midday News for 26 April 2016
BODY:
Allegations the Labour Inspectorate is so under-staffed it can't properly monitor farm workers' conditions and Broc Kawhena pleads not guilty to the manslaughter of Ocean Heke.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 14'58"
12:16
Brierley's Mercantile ups offer for shell of Kirkcaldies
BODY:
Sir Ron Brierley has raised his offer for what's left of Wellington's former posh shop Kirkcaldie and Stains.
Topics: business
Regions: Wellington Region
Tags: retail
Duration: 1'06"
12:18
Property market in Australia slowing
BODY:
Over to Australia and our man in Sydney, Jim Parker. He says the property market is finally slowing down.
Topics: business
Regions:
Tags: Australia, property
Duration: 57"
12:22
Midday Markets for 26 April 2016
BODY:
For the latest from the markets we're joined by Angus Marks at First NZ Capital.
Topics: business
Regions:
Tags: markets
Duration: 2'18"
12:26
Midday Sports News for 26 April 2016
BODY:
Leicester City are one step closer to winning the English Premier League after their closest rivals, Tottenham Hotpsur drew one-all with West Bromich Albion this morning.
Topics: sport
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 3'23"
12:35
Midday Rural News for 26 April 2016
BODY:
News from the rural and farming sectors.
Topics: rural, farming
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 9'20"
=SHOW NOTES=
===1:06 PM. | Jesse Mulligan, 1–4pm===
=DESCRIPTION=
An upbeat mix of the curious and the compelling, ranging from the stories of the day to the great questions of our time (RNZ)
=AUDIO=
13:08
Beyoncé's 'Lemonade'
BODY:
The new Beyoncé album and film debuted over the weekend. The Spinoff's Anny Ma discusses these works in their cultural context.
EXTENDED BODY:
Beyoncé debuted her new album and film Lemonade over the weekend. Writer, tweeter and cultural commentator Annie Ma tallks with Jesse Mulligan about the work and how people are reacting.
Topics: music, arts
Regions:
Tags: Beyonce
Duration: 9'11"
13:23
Gimme Shelter - James Crow
BODY:
James Crow is shining a light on the homeless, by starting a project called Gimme Shelter. His aim is to find out just how big the problem is, and engaging the community to solve the problem.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 10'40"
13:33
Flashdance - Julia Macchio
BODY:
Flashdance is on in Auckland at the moment and the star of the show is Julia Macchio. The actress and dancer is the daughter of the 'Karate Kid', Ralph Macchio.
Topics: arts
Regions:
Tags: theatre, Flashdance
Duration: 7'36"
13:45
Favourite Album - The Final Cut
BODY:
The Final Cut - Pink Floyd.
Topics: music
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 17'39"
14:10
Anzacs Rising
BODY:
One hundred years ago a group of New Zealand soldiers caught up in the Irish Easter Rising of 1916 had the chance to change history when one had a clear shot of the rebel leader James Connolly.
Topics: history
Regions:
Tags: Anzacs, World War 1, Easter Rising
Duration: 11'04"
14:20
Great New Zealand Album - Time and Tide
BODY:
Eddie Rayner talks about the making of Split Enz's 1982 album Time & Tide.
Topics: music, history
Regions:
Tags: Split Enz
Duration: 39'37"
15:10
Feature interview - Danielle Feinberg
BODY:
When Dory and Marlin search the vast Ocean to find Nemo, or Princess Merida goes in search of her own destiny in the Oscar winning movie Brave there's a touch of magic, math and computer science at work. Sometimes it takes science to make art according to Danielle Feinberg the director of photography at Pixar Animation Studios. She's also a mentor with Google's initiative, Made with Code, that encourages and inspires girls to embrace code, math and look at a career in computer science.
EXTENDED BODY:
When Dory and Marlin search the vast Ocean to find Nemo, or Princess Merida goes in search of her own destiny in the Oscar-winning movie Brave there's a touch of magic, math and computer science at work.
Sometimes it takes science to make art according to Danielle Feinberg the director of photography at Pixar Animation Studios.
She's also a mentor with Google's initiative, Made with Code, that encourages and inspires girls to embrace code, math and look at a career in computer science.
Topics: arts, science
Regions:
Tags: Pixar, film
Duration: 23'00"
15:45
The Panel pre-show for 26 April 2016
BODY:
What the world is talking about, with Jesse Mulligan, Jim Mora and Zara Potts.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 13'49"
21:06
Survivors - New Zealand's tiny native frogs
BODY:
After 35 years of counting threatened Archey's frog on the Coromandel Peninsula, Ben Bell has seen their numbers crash due to the chytrid fungal disease, and the population slowly recover.
EXTENDED BODY:
“They’re green and brown, and often very beautifully coloured. They’re the real jewels of the Coromandel Peninsula in my opinion.”
Ben Bell, Archey’s frog expert, Victoria University of Wellington
New Zealand has the dubious honour of being home to the world’s most "evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered" amphibian species. The Zoological Society of London has collated what they call their EDGE list for different groups of animals, and number one on their list of amphibians is a tiny New Zealand native frog.
Archey’s frog is found only in the Coromandel and at one site in the King Country, and it is the smallest of our four ancient native frogs.
These are frogs like no other – they’re forest frogs, that have no external ears, no croak and no tadpoles. The baby froglets climb onto their dad’s back and he looks after them until they’re big enough to be independent.
Biologist Ben Bell has been fascinated with the little Leiopelma frogs since he began working at Victoria University of Wellington in the 1970s, and in 1982 he began an annual count of frogs living in a 10 by 10-metre quadrat at an undisclosed site on the Coromandel Peninsula.
The small frogs live under rocks on the forest floor, and the process to count them is simple albeit a little tedious. People crawl across the quadrat on their hands and knees lifting every rock and collecting every frog they find.
Ben uses natural colour patterns and markings to recognise individual animals, and between 1982 and 2016 he has identified 769 individual Archey’s frogs in this small patch of forest.
Ben says the most significant finding from the study has been to identify when the introduced chytrid fungus arrived in the population, causing its numbers to crash. This was in 1996, and to begin with it was not clear what had caused the population to drop from more than 700 animals to less than 100. Then, in 2001, the first case of chytrid fungus in an Archey’s frog was confirmed at Mount Moehau, following on from an earlier detection in an introduced Australian frog in the South Island.
“The pathogenic chytrid fungus was probably the significant factor behind the population crash we saw in 1996, when frog numbers declined by 88 percent,” says Ben.
Chytrid fungus is a significant problem for amphibians worldwide. It has caused numerous population crashes and even species extinctions, but the news is not always as grim as it might have first seemed.
Since 1996, the Archey’s frog population has stabilised and even grown a little, now numbering between 100 and 150. Chytrid fungus still exists in the population, but most of the surviving population seem to have developed an immunity. While successful breeding continues the number of young frogs that survive each year is much reduced.
“Before the population crash I used to find as many as five frogs under a single rock. Today most of the rocks we lift have no frogs.”
One of the unexpected consequences, says Ben, has been an increase in the size of the remaining frogs. He thinks there is less competition and more food available to the survivors.
Chytrid fungus has not been detected in the three other native frog species, including the slightly larger and more aquatic Hochstetter’s frog, which lives alongside Archey’s frog on the Coromandel Peninsula.
Chytrid fungus probably arrived in New Zealand on an introduced amphibian, possibly the clawed African frog that used to be used in pregnancy testing,
Small frogs – long lives
New Zealand’s native Leiopelma frogs are remarkably long-lived, even though they only grow to between 31-37 millimetres long.
During his 2016 count Ben and his willing team of frog fans found 14 Archey’s frogs, and three of these were oldies that Ben says “substantially advanced the known longevity of the species: one was 30 years old, one at least 33 years old, and another about 35 years old.”
That last frog is as old as the study, and since Ben reports that he knows of a Maud Island frog that is at least 43 years old, it’s clear that this is not yet the last word in how long Archey’s frogs live for.
Native versus introduced frogs
As well as the four native species of frogs, New Zealand is home to three introduced species. Jen Germano from the Department of Conservation says it is a simple matter to tell them apart.
“If you hear a frog calling then it’s Australian, because the New Zealand frogs are actually completely silent.”
The New Zealand frogs don’t have external eardrums, while the Australian species do.
Topics: science, environment
Regions:
Tags: frogs, Coromandel Peninsula, chytrid fungus, population decline, Archey's frog, Leiopelma
Duration: 13'13"
=SHOW NOTES=
1:15 Beyoncé Lemonade - Anny Ma
The new Beyonce album and film debuted over the weekend. The Spinoff's Anny Ma discusses these works in their cultural context.
1:25 Gimme Shelter - James Crow
James Crow is shining a little on the homeless, by starting a project called Gimme Shelter. His aim is to find out just how big the problem is, and engaging the community to solve the problem.
1:35 Flashdance - Julia Macchio
Flashdance is on in Auckland at the moment and the star of the show is Julia Macchio. The actress and dancer is the daughter of the 'Karate Kid', Ralph Macchio.
1:40 Favourite Album
The Final Cut - Pink Floyd.
2:10 ANZACS Rising
One hundred years ago a group of New Zealand soldiers caught up in the Irish Easter Rising of 1916 had the chance to change history when one had a clear shot of the rebel leader James Connolly.
2:20 Great New Zealand Album
Time & Tide - Split Enz.
3:10 Feature Interview - Danielle Feinberg
When Dory and Marlin search the vast Ocean to find Nemo, or Princess Merida goes in search of her own destiny in the Oscar winning movie Brave there's a touch of magic, math and computer science at work. Sometimes it takes science to make art according to Danielle Feinberg the director of photography at Pixar Animation Studios. She's also a mentor with Google's initiative, Made with Code, that encourages and inspires girls to embrace code, math and look at a career in computer science.
3:30 Our Changing World
Ben Bell has been studying New Zealand's ancient native frogs for 35 years, and in that time he has seen the devastating effect that the introduced chytrid fungus has had on their populations. Alison Ballance joins him on the Coromandel Peninsula for his annual Archey's frog count, which involves a little mobile frog photographic studio as well as crawling across the forest floor on hands and knees.
3:45 The Panel Pre-Show
What the world is talking about with Jesse Mulligan, Jim Mora and Zara Potts.
=PLAYLIST=
JESSE'S SONG:
ARTIST: Beyoncé
TITLE: Hold Up
COMP: Thomas Pentz, Ezra Koenig, Beyoncé Knowles, Emile Haynie, Joshua Tillman, Uzoechi Emenike ·
Sean "Melo-X" Rhoden, Doc Pomus, Mort Shuman, DeAndre Way, Antonio Randolph ·
Kelvin McConnell, Brian Chase, Karen Orzolek, Nick Zinner
ALBUM: Lemonade
LABEL: Columbia
FEATURE ALBUM:
ARTIST: Pink Floyd
TITLE: When the Tigers Broke Free
COMP: Roger Waters
ALBUM The Final Cut
LABEL Harvest
ARTIST: Pink Floyd
TITLE: The Fletcher Memorial Home
COMP: Roger Waters
ALBUM The Final Cut
LABEL Harvest
ARTIST: Pink Floyd
TITLE: Paranoid Eyes
COMP: Roger Waters
ALBUM The Final Cut
LABEL Harvest
ARTIST: Pink Floyd
TITLE: Southampton Dock
COMP: Roger Waters
ALBUM The Final Cut
LABEL Harvest
THE GREAT NEW ZEALAND ALBUM:
ARTIST: Split Enz
TITLE: Dirty Creature
COMP: Neil Finn, Tim Finn, Nigel Griggs
ALBUM: Time & Tide
LABEL: Mushroom
ARTIST: Split Enz
TITLE: Pioneer / Six Months in a Leaky Boat
COMP: Eddie Rayner / Tim Finn., Neil Finn., Noel Crombie, Nigel Griggs, Eddie Rayner
ALBUM: Time & Tide
LABEL: Mushroom
ARTIST: Split Enz
TITLE: Never Ceases to Amaze Me
COMP: Tim Finn
ALBUM: Time & Tide
LABEL: Mushroom
ARTIST: Split Enz
TITLE: Hello Sandy Allen
COMP: Neil Finn
ALBUM: Time & Tide
LABEL: Mushroom
ADDITIONAL TRACK:
ARTIST: Tiny Ruins
TITLE: Little Notes
COMP: Hollie Fullbrook
ALBUM: Some Were Meant For The Sea
LABEL: Spunk
THE PANEL: HALFTIME SONG
ARTIST: Donald O'Connor
TITLE: Maria
COMP: Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim
ALBUM: West Side Story Original Soundtrack
LABEL: Columbia
===4:06 PM. | The Panel===
=DESCRIPTION=
An hour of discussion featuring a range of panellists from right along the opinion spectrum (RNZ)
=AUDIO=
15:45
The Panel pre-show for 26 April 2016
BODY:
What the world is talking about, with Jesse Mulligan, Jim Mora and Zara Potts.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 13'49"
16:06
The Panel with Josie McNaught and Julia Hartley Moore (Part 1)
BODY:
Intro. The Prime Minister's suggested a land tax to tackle the Auckland housing issue. There's a call for hand sanitisers to be out of harms way for children. In America the middle class struggle to save is a growing issue. Drive through dining in Marlborough takes on a new meaning.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 23'34"
16:07
The Panel with Josie McNaught and Julia Hartley Moore (Part 2)
BODY:
Names. Panel Says. Channel nine is facing a back lash over its 60 Minutes child snatching saga. There's talk tougher controls on Auckland nightlife meaning the city will suffer. More on the suggestion struggler home buyers can only blame themselves.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 28'02"
16:08
Intro
BODY:
What the Panelists Julia Hartley-Moore and Josie McNaught have been up to.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 5'06"
16:12
Prime Minister's suggested a land tax to tackle housing issue
BODY:
PWC tax expert Geof Nightengale talks about the proposed land tax scheme and how it might impact the housing market.
Topics: housing, politics
Regions: Auckland Region
Tags: land tax
Duration: 9'38"
16:22
Call for hand sanitisers to be out of harms way for children
BODY:
Hand sanitisers might be subject to conditions.
Topics: health
Regions:
Tags: safety
Duration: 2'23"
16:25
In America the middle class struggle to save is a growing issue
BODY:
Americans are struggling to save even small amounts of money.
Topics: life and society
Regions:
Tags: money
Duration: 4'00"
16:28
Drive through dining in Marlborough takes on a new meaning
BODY:
A Blenheim restaurant has struck a deal with neighbouring businesses that will see town centre parking spaces make way for al fresco dining. The restaurant is MIA, on Scott Street, which plans to create an on-street dining area on three angled parking spaces outside.
Topics:
Regions: Marlborough
Tags: restaurants
Duration: 2'05"
16:32
Names
BODY:
Have you noticed names are getting more and more diverse?
Topics:
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 6'16"
16:39
Panel Says
BODY:
What the Panelists Julia Hartley Moore and Josie McNaught have been thinking about.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 2'47"
16:42
Channel nine is facing a back lash over its 60 Minutes child snatching saga
BODY:
Dr Chris Galloway from Massey University talks about the damage done in the 60 Minutes child snatching saga.
Topics: law, crime
Regions:
Tags: 60 Minutes, Australia, Lebanon
Duration: 11'51"
16:54
There's talk tougher controls on Auckland nightlife meaning the city will suffer
BODY:
There's a concern that more rules and tougher policing will lead to the death of night life in Auckland.
Topics: life and society
Regions: Auckland Region
Tags: liquor laws
Duration: 4'03"
16:57
More on suggestion home buyers can only blame themselves
BODY:
Listeners are still reacting to the suggestion that people struggling to get on to the property ladder are wasting their money on frivolities.
Topics: life and society, housing
Regions:
Tags: property
Duration: 2'32"
=SHOW NOTES=
===5:00 PM. | Checkpoint===
=DESCRIPTION=
RNZ's weekday drive-time news and current affairs programme
=AUDIO=
17:00
Checkpoint with John Campbell, Tuesday 26th April 2016
BODY:
Watch Tuesday's full programme here.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 00"
17:10
Teenagers found guilty of murder in Epsom motel
BODY:
Two Auckland teenagers were today found guilty of the premeditated murder of Ihaia Gillman-Harris in December 2014. Carla Penman reports.
Topics: crime, law
Regions: Auckland Region
Tags:
Duration: 3'03"
17:13
Proposed land tax for non-residents mooted by PM
BODY:
The Prime Minister has signalled a land tax for non-residents may be on the cards, if forthcoming figures indicate a significant impact on the New Zealand property market by non-resident buyers.
Topics: politics, housing
Regions:
Tags: land tax
Duration: 5'42"
17:17
Land tax plan seeks to curb property price inflation
BODY:
Could a land tax solve New Zealand's housing issues? Political editor Jane Patterson joins Checkpoint to discuss the Prime Minister's proposal.
Topics: politics, housing
Regions:
Tags: land tax
Duration: 3'10"
17:20
PM has not delivered on promise, says father of triplets
BODY:
Martin Weekes, the father of triplets killed in a fire at a Doha mall, says the Prime Minister has broken a promise to get justice for his children.
Topics: law, politics
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 5'50"
17:26
Canadian PM calls hostage execution 'cold-blooded murder'
BODY:
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the "cold-blooded murder" of a Canadian beheaded by terrorists in the Philippines after being held hostage for seven months.
Topics: crime
Regions:
Tags: Phillipines
Duration: 2'14"
17:29
Call for ban on cartoon mascots for unhealthy food
BODY:
Auckland health authorities have called for changes to advertising regulations to ban child-friendly mascots on unhealthy food - which may mean bidding farewell to Cookie Bear.
Topics: health, food
Regions: Auckland Region
Tags:
Duration: 3'29"
17:35
Evening business for 26 April 2016
BODY:
News from the business sector, including a market report.
Topics: business
Regions:
Tags: markets
Duration: 2'45"
17:38
Labour Inspectorate under-resourced, says Opposition
BODY:
New Zealand needs to triple the number of labour inspectors across the country to meet international guidelines and ensure farm workers are being treated properly, the Labour Party said.
Topics: politics, rural, farming
Regions:
Tags: employment
Duration: 2'50"
17:41
Thousands denied medical assessments over 3 months of 2015
BODY:
Information released for the first time today reveals how hard it is for some patients to access elective or non-urgent surgery.
Topics: health, politics
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 4'25"
17:47
Chernobyl victims honored on 30th anniversary
BODY:
Thirty years after the world's worst nuclear explosion in Chernobyl, those who lost loved ones in the blast gathered today for a vigil in Kiev.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags: Chernobyl
Duration: 1'51"
17:49
A rural retirement in Chernobyl's radioactive shadow
BODY:
A woman evacuated in the aftermath of the Chernobyl explosion, which forced 220,000 people from their home, has returned there to retire - and others are being urged to do the same.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags: Chernobyl
Duration: 2'06"
17:50
Court hears how police coaxed murder confession
BODY:
Undercover police officers coaxed an Auckland man accused of murder into a confession by showing him where the bodies were buried. Kate Newton reports.
Topics: law, crime
Regions:
Tags:
Duration: 2'49"
17:53
Auckland iwi sign up to develop 400 new homes
BODY:
An Auckland iwi has become new property developers in one of the city's biggest and newest housing developments.
Topics: te ao Maori, housing
Regions: Auckland Region
Tags: property
Duration: 3'58"
17:58
Plan to do scientific work in minus 50 degrees
BODY:
In a world first, five New Zealand scientists are planning to carry out research in the middle of the Antarctic winter.
Topics: science
Regions:
Tags: Antarctica
Duration: 3'05"
18:10
Melbourne also suffering from a housing crisis
BODY:
Melbourne is suffering from a housing crisis of its own - which shares some similarities with Auckland's. But the state of Victoria does have its own land tax, which excludes your primary home, and also any land used by charities.
Topics: housing
Regions:
Tags: Australia, land tax
Duration: 4'39"
18:13
Lianne Dalziel will contend mayoral election
BODY:
The Christchurch mayor, Lianne Dalziel, says attending yesterday's ANZAC Day service crystallised her decision to stand for a second term.
Topics: politics
Regions: Canterbury
Tags: Christchurch
Duration: 5'51"
18:19
One year on from deadly Nepal quake
BODY:
A baby who miraculously survived last year's deadly Nepal earthquake at two-days-old, is still living in a makeshift shed a year on, as his family awaits support to reconstruct their flattened home.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags: Nepal, earthquakes
Duration: 1'49"
18:22
Nepalese still struggling one year on from quake
BODY:
So many regions are still struggling one year on from the fatal earthquake, with some buildings still lying in ruins and people still in dire need of ongoing medical care.
Topics:
Regions:
Tags: Nepal, earthquakes
Duration: 4'02"
18:25
National MP becomes one of few to reach North and South Poles
BODY:
National MP turned adventurer Andrew Bayly has become one of less than 50 people to reach both the North and South Poles.
Topics: politics
Regions:
Tags: Antarctica, North Pole, South Pole
Duration: 5'03"
=SHOW NOTES=
===6:30 PM. | Worldwatch===
=DESCRIPTION=
The stories behind the international headlines
===7:06 PM. | Nights===
=DESCRIPTION=
RNZ's weeknight programme of entertainment and information
=AUDIO=
19:10
Our Own Odysseys - Lyndon Poskitt - Races to Places
BODY:
Lyndon Poskitt is riding his motorcycle around the world competing in international cross-country rallies along the way.
Topics: transport, technology, life and society
Regions:
Tags: Motorbikes, international cross country rallies
Duration: 18'03"
20:10
Nights' Pundit - Feminism
BODY:
Double standard - Women in Politics - Feminist blogger Deborah Russell.
Topics: politics
Regions:
Tags: feminism
Duration: 17'40"
=SHOW NOTES=
[image:66191:half]
7:12 Travel - Odysseys
Lyndon Poskitt is riding his motorcycle around the world competing in international cross-country rallies along the way. He aims to travel over 100,000 miles, over 50 countries and crossing 6 continents.
7:30 The Sampler
=SHOW NOTES=
=AUDIO=
19:30
The Hope Six Demolition Project by PJ Harvey
BODY:
Nick Bollinger discusses the front-line dispatches of PJ Harvey's The Hope Six Demolition Project.
EXTENDED BODY:
Nick Bollinger discusses the front-line dispatches of PJ Harvey's The Hope Six Demolition Project.
Anyone familiar with PJ Harvey’s last album Let England Shake will notice that the preoccupations of that record haven’t gone away. A song cycle about war and nationalism, it took an almost impossibly weighty subject and created something shockingly listenable. And war is again the underlying theme of The Hope Six Demolition Project.
After the release of Let England Shake, Harvey undertook a series of journeys with photographer and film-maker Seamus Murphy, in places ravaged by war, such as Kosovo and Afghanistan. And in The Hope Six Demolition Project she reports on her observations, almost in the manner of a journalist or war correspondent. ‘The Ministry Of Defence’ might be as close to pure reportage as songwriting ever gets, as Harvey surveys the remains of a government building in Kabul, noting the mortar holes, sprayed graffiti and human excrement. The tone may seem dispassionate, yet as with any journalism, our gaze is guided by the writer. The words she finds - ‘scratched in biro pen: this is how the world will end’ – become a proxy for own voice, as she surveys the depressing scene, backed up with a riff that has all the gloomy weight of early Black Sabbath.
For much of the album – Harvey uses a male chorus in a kind of call-and-response style. There is something almost Brechtian about the way they take up her words in a plain, emotionless delivery, feeding into the sense of objectivity.
But it’s not just an album of war tourism. And crucial to the whole effect of the record is that the setting for a number of these songs is the United States, specifically Washington DC. Again there’s the piling up of images, as Harvey is guided around Washington’s blighted Ward 7. And despite the appealingly clattery garage-rock flavour of ‘The Community Of Hope’, the sum effect is as bleak as her depictions of Afghanistan or Kosovo. The fact that the city in which this takes place is the political heart of America hardly seems coincidental.
Some of Harvey’s lyrical snapshots are startling; others come close to cliché. If she identifies a cause of all this human suffering, it’s a familiar one: the unequal distribution of wealth, which she alludes to when she mashes together two old rhythm and blues choruses - ‘money honey, that’s what they want’ - in ‘The Ministry of Social Affairs’.
But there’s still some rock’n’roll mischief in PJ Harvey, even as she depicts a world without hope. It’s the Brecht thing again: upbeat songs to show us the misery of people’s lives.
Also somewhat Brechtian is the way the album was recorded: in public, as an installation project for London’s Somerset House arts centre, allowing the audience a look behind the curtain, stripping away the illusion and artifice that normally separates entertainer from audience. We’re all in this together, that process seems to say.
And yet Harvey knows that the separation between artist and audience is not easily dismantled, just as there remains a separation between the artist and her subject. And that’s never clearer than in the song that closes the album. As in the opening track, it finds Harvey as a passenger in a moving car, recording what she sees from the window. At one point a young beggar approaches, asking for change, yet before she has time to respond her vehicle speeds away.
As a metaphor for western guilt it may be heavy-handed. And on one level, you could hear PJ Harvey’s Hope Six Demolition Project as just a great big meditation on western guilt; one that doesn’t propose any original thoughts or solutions. But as an experiment in how a rock record can engage with the world – or at least with its audience – it has to be admired.
Songs featured: A Line in the Sand, The Ministry of Defence, The Community of Hope, Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln, Medicinals, The Ministry of Social Affairs, Dollar Dollar, The Wheel.
The Hope Six Demolition Project is available on Island Records
Topics: music
Regions:
Tags: PJ Harvey, music, music review
Duration: 12'33"
19:30
Jet Plane and Oxbow by Shearwater
BODY:
Nick Bollinger checks a lush 80s-style set from Austin alt-rock group Shearwater.
EXTENDED BODY:
Nick Bollinger checks a lush 80s-style set from Austin alt-rock group Shearwater.
Shearwater is an indie-rock band from Austin, Texas, who started as an offshoot of Okkervill River - another indie-rock band from Austin, Texas - to play the quieter songs that didn’t fit the Okkervill River repertoire. Fifteen years on, Shearwater is a fully-fledged band with a dozen albums in its catalogue, and the latest is as big and commanding as anything Okkervill River ever did. A working knowledge of all eleven of their earlier releases isn’t necessary to appreciate it, but a soft spot for early 80s Bowie and 80s production styles might help.
Jet Plane and Oxbow has such a shiny, synthetic surface –burbling Moog arpeggios, big reverberating drum beats, tinkling glockenspiel sounds – that it takes a listen or two to realise that what is being depicted in these songs is not some science fiction cyberworld. Initially a platform for two songwriters, Will Sheff and Jonathan Meiburg, Shearwater has, over the years, become solely Meiburg’s baby. As well as being a fine singer and musician, he is a qualified ornithologist – hence the fact that his band is named after a seabird – and a concern for the natural environment is the thread that runs through his writing.
But none of that’s initially obvious, even in a song he calls ‘Wildlife In America.’ Meiburg has referred to being affected by an interview he read with David Bowie around the time of his Scary Monsters album, in which Bowie referred to that record as ‘social protest music’, and that might be a touchstone for Meiburg’s own writing. On top of his big Bowie-esque melodies, which he delivers in a full, trained-sounding tenor, his words have something of Bowie’s obliqueness about them, never punching the subject on the nose but rather defining it through a series of strong sensory impressions. This then, is Shearwater’s version of ‘social protest music’. In ‘Wildlife In America’ Meiburg’s got childhood friendships and Egyptian empires and small-doses of amphetamine all bound up together, but enough to reinforce the idea of some sort of paradise lost.
Perhaps the closest Meiburg comes to delivering his message directly is in the song he calls ‘Quiet Americans’. ‘If all the world is ending,’ he asks, ‘Where are the Americans?’ Even that title has a ring of Bowie about it.
Shearwater is one of those bands with a seemingly ever-changing lineup, and the roll-call for this latest record includes film composer Brian Reitzell, probably best known for his Lost In Translation soundtrack. His contributions no doubt have something to do with the record’s lush, cinematic textures. Yet I think there is another, quieter record that could make more of these songs, putting more emphasis on Meiburg’s lyrical and vocal strengths. Shearwater’s Jet Plane and Oxbow is a grower, though. It’s been out since early in the year and I feel like I’m just starting to grasp what a deep and detailed piece of work it is.
Songs featured: Prime, A Long Time Away, Wildlife in America, Filaments, Quiet Americans.
Jet Plane and Oxbow is available on Sub Pop Records
Topics: music
Regions:
Tags: Shearwater, music, music review
Duration: 7'59"
19:30
A Sailor's Guide To Earth by Sturgill Simpson
BODY:
Nick Bollinger delves into an album that combines soul horns and grunge anthems with classic country from Sturgill Simpson.
EXTENDED BODY:
Nick Bollinger delves into an album that combines soul horns and grunge anthems with classic country from Sturgill Simpson.
Sturgill Simpson is the kind of name that could somehow only belong to a country singer. Which is lucky, because Sturgill Simpson has the kind of voice that was made for country as well.
It’s a classic country voice – not an alt-country whimper but a big dark rumble, like the ghost of Waylon Jennings, returned to dispense outlaw justice. That voice got deserved attention with Simpson’s first two albums, the 2013 High Top Mountain and the following year’s Metamodern Sounds In Country Music. The latter title was particularly apt, because while Simpson has the voice of a traditionalist – and a terrific, tradition-steeped band to match – his concerns are a little wider, and more contemporary, than the old drinking-loving-fighting triangle of classic country. On Metamodern Sounds he didn’t just sing about whiskey, but also LSD, and he wasn’t just tipping his hat to Willie and Waylon but to Carl Sagan and Aldous Huxley. But on his new album, he’s shifted the frame yet again. And this time he’s both more traditional and more metamodern.
As with his earlier albums, there is an overarching theme to this latest one, and it’s one with a long tradition in country music: the birth of Simpson’s first son. He’s called the album A Sailor’s Guide To Earth, both a literal and metaphoric guise for a list of do’s and don’t-do’s from a father who has spent much of his life as an itinerant, firstly with the US Navy, then as a professional musician.
Simpson doesn’t spare the string section nor the piano player in the ballad that opens the set. Big feelings call for big gestures, and this one threatens to tip over in Billy Joel territory. But it’s just one indication that Simpson doesn’t see himself as some fringe, alternative anything, or is even fundamentally concerned with country traditions. His voice is country, that’s a given, and he’ll use whatever it takes to put it across; which might be a string section, or a soul band – and he has the great Dap Kings horn section supplying wind-power for several tracks on the album. Simpson might be thinking of great 70s country-soul crossovers, like Tony Joe White to Bobby Womack, but he must also recall that it was the Dap Kings who Amy Winehouse used just a decade ago for her big commercial crossover. At other times, Simpson steers his band into a place closer in spirit to ZZ Top.
But in a way the most ‘rock’ gesture on the album is one the quietest tracks - Nirvana’s ‘In Bloom’ given the full countrypolitan makeover. You sense Simpson’s genuine affection for the old grunge anthem, and I guess it has its place in the autobiographic picture he’s put together for his newborn son. Yet once again I wouldn’t discount an element of sheer commercial savvy.
What’s certain is that with each of his albums, Simpson’s reputation has grown and this one looks likely to take him well beyond the country cognoscenti, to people who don’t even think of themselves as country fans. With strings, horns, Kurt Cobain songs and rock pyrotechnics, A Sailor’s Guide To Earth dreams big, and might make Simpson the crossover star he deserves to be. Yet my favourite moments are still the ones where I feel I’ve just walked into some anonymous southern roadhouse and chanced upon the best bar singer I’ve ever heard.
Songs featured: Sea Stories, Welcome To Earth, Keep It Between the Lines, Sugar Daddy, Call To Arms.
A Sailor’s Guide To Earth is available on Thirty Tigers Records.
Topics: music
Regions:
Tags: Sturgill Simpson, music, music review
Duration: 9'33"
19:30
The Sampler for 26 April 2016
BODY:
In The Sampler this week Nick Bollinger discusses the front-line dispatches of PJ Harvey's The Hope Six Demolition Project; a lush 80s-style set from Austin alt-rock group Shearwater; and an album that combines soul horns and grunge anthems with classic country from Sturgill Simpson.
EXTENDED BODY:
In The Sampler this week Nick Bollinger discusses the front-line dispatches of PJ Harvey's The Hope Six Demolition Project; a lush 80s-style set from Austin alt-rock group Shearwater; and an album that combines soul horns and grunge anthems with classic country from Sturgill Simpson.
Topics: music
Regions:
Tags: PJ Harvey, Shearwater, Sturgill Simpson
Duration: 30'00"
7:30 The Sampler
Music album reviews & music discussion with Nick Bollinger. This week Nick discusses the front-line dispatches of PJ Harvey's The Hope Six Demolition Project; a lush 80s-style set from Austin alt-rock group Shearwater; and an album that combines soul horns and grunge anthems with classic country from Sturgill Simpson.
8:12 Nights' Pundit - Feminism
Why do we still judge female politicians on how they look? We're talking with feminist blogger Deborah Russell about the perils facing women in politics.
[image:66171:half] no metadata
8:30 Window on the World
Norway's widely regarded as one of the world's most progressive societies, yet it's at the centre of an international storm over its child protection policies. Campaigners accuse its social workers of removing children - some from immigrant backgrounds - from their parents without justification, and permanently erasing family bonds. Tim Whewell meets parents who say they've lost their children because of misunderstood remarks or "insufficient eye contact" - and Norwegian professionals who call the system monstrous and dysfunctional. Is a service designed to put children first now out of control?
9:07 Tuesday Feature
The 1916 Rising - The Irish Historian, Heather Jones, reassesses what came to be known as 'The Easter Rising' - the insurrection against British rule in 1916 which triggered the secession of 26 Irish counties from the United Kingdom into an independent state.
10:17 Late Edition
A round up of today's RNZ News and feature interviews as well as Date Line Pacific from RNZ International
11:07 At the Eleventh Hour
This week Global Village heads to South Africa Friday for classic recordings and some new and contemporary artists and releases. Highlights include music from the Soul Brothers, Mahlathini & the Mahotella Queens, the African Jazz Pioneers, Ladysmith Black Mambazo - and new releases from Max-Hoba, Afrika Mamas, and the Rough Guide to South African Jazz.
===7:35 PM. | The Sampler===
=DESCRIPTION=
A weekly review and analysis of new CD releases
=AUDIO=
19:30
The Hope Six Demolition Project by PJ Harvey
BODY:
Nick Bollinger discusses the front-line dispatches of PJ Harvey's The Hope Six Demolition Project.
EXTENDED BODY:
Nick Bollinger discusses the front-line dispatches of PJ Harvey's The Hope Six Demolition Project.
Anyone familiar with PJ Harvey’s last album Let England Shake will notice that the preoccupations of that record haven’t gone away. A song cycle about war and nationalism, it took an almost impossibly weighty subject and created something shockingly listenable. And war is again the underlying theme of The Hope Six Demolition Project.
After the release of Let England Shake, Harvey undertook a series of journeys with photographer and film-maker Seamus Murphy, in places ravaged by war, such as Kosovo and Afghanistan. And in The Hope Six Demolition Project she reports on her observations, almost in the manner of a journalist or war correspondent. ‘The Ministry Of Defence’ might be as close to pure reportage as songwriting ever gets, as Harvey surveys the remains of a government building in Kabul, noting the mortar holes, sprayed graffiti and human excrement. The tone may seem dispassionate, yet as with any journalism, our gaze is guided by the writer. The words she finds - ‘scratched in biro pen: this is how the world will end’ – become a proxy for own voice, as she surveys the depressing scene, backed up with a riff that has all the gloomy weight of early Black Sabbath.
For much of the album – Harvey uses a male chorus in a kind of call-and-response style. There is something almost Brechtian about the way they take up her words in a plain, emotionless delivery, feeding into the sense of objectivity.
But it’s not just an album of war tourism. And crucial to the whole effect of the record is that the setting for a number of these songs is the United States, specifically Washington DC. Again there’s the piling up of images, as Harvey is guided around Washington’s blighted Ward 7. And despite the appealingly clattery garage-rock flavour of ‘The Community Of Hope’, the sum effect is as bleak as her depictions of Afghanistan or Kosovo. The fact that the city in which this takes place is the political heart of America hardly seems coincidental.
Some of Harvey’s lyrical snapshots are startling; others come close to cliché. If she identifies a cause of all this human suffering, it’s a familiar one: the unequal distribution of wealth, which she alludes to when she mashes together two old rhythm and blues choruses - ‘money honey, that’s what they want’ - in ‘The Ministry of Social Affairs’.
But there’s still some rock’n’roll mischief in PJ Harvey, even as she depicts a world without hope. It’s the Brecht thing again: upbeat songs to show us the misery of people’s lives.
Also somewhat Brechtian is the way the album was recorded: in public, as an installation project for London’s Somerset House arts centre, allowing the audience a look behind the curtain, stripping away the illusion and artifice that normally separates entertainer from audience. We’re all in this together, that process seems to say.
And yet Harvey knows that the separation between artist and audience is not easily dismantled, just as there remains a separation between the artist and her subject. And that’s never clearer than in the song that closes the album. As in the opening track, it finds Harvey as a passenger in a moving car, recording what she sees from the window. At one point a young beggar approaches, asking for change, yet before she has time to respond her vehicle speeds away.
As a metaphor for western guilt it may be heavy-handed. And on one level, you could hear PJ Harvey’s Hope Six Demolition Project as just a great big meditation on western guilt; one that doesn’t propose any original thoughts or solutions. But as an experiment in how a rock record can engage with the world – or at least with its audience – it has to be admired.
Songs featured: A Line in the Sand, The Ministry of Defence, The Community of Hope, Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln, Medicinals, The Ministry of Social Affairs, Dollar Dollar, The Wheel.
The Hope Six Demolition Project is available on Island Records
Topics: music
Regions:
Tags: PJ Harvey, music, music review
Duration: 12'33"
19:30
Jet Plane and Oxbow by Shearwater
BODY:
Nick Bollinger checks a lush 80s-style set from Austin alt-rock group Shearwater.
EXTENDED BODY:
Nick Bollinger checks a lush 80s-style set from Austin alt-rock group Shearwater.
Shearwater is an indie-rock band from Austin, Texas, who started as an offshoot of Okkervill River - another indie-rock band from Austin, Texas - to play the quieter songs that didn’t fit the Okkervill River repertoire. Fifteen years on, Shearwater is a fully-fledged band with a dozen albums in its catalogue, and the latest is as big and commanding as anything Okkervill River ever did. A working knowledge of all eleven of their earlier releases isn’t necessary to appreciate it, but a soft spot for early 80s Bowie and 80s production styles might help.
Jet Plane and Oxbow has such a shiny, synthetic surface –burbling Moog arpeggios, big reverberating drum beats, tinkling glockenspiel sounds – that it takes a listen or two to realise that what is being depicted in these songs is not some science fiction cyberworld. Initially a platform for two songwriters, Will Sheff and Jonathan Meiburg, Shearwater has, over the years, become solely Meiburg’s baby. As well as being a fine singer and musician, he is a qualified ornithologist – hence the fact that his band is named after a seabird – and a concern for the natural environment is the thread that runs through his writing.
But none of that’s initially obvious, even in a song he calls ‘Wildlife In America.’ Meiburg has referred to being affected by an interview he read with David Bowie around the time of his Scary Monsters album, in which Bowie referred to that record as ‘social protest music’, and that might be a touchstone for Meiburg’s own writing. On top of his big Bowie-esque melodies, which he delivers in a full, trained-sounding tenor, his words have something of Bowie’s obliqueness about them, never punching the subject on the nose but rather defining it through a series of strong sensory impressions. This then, is Shearwater’s version of ‘social protest music’. In ‘Wildlife In America’ Meiburg’s got childhood friendships and Egyptian empires and small-doses of amphetamine all bound up together, but enough to reinforce the idea of some sort of paradise lost.
Perhaps the closest Meiburg comes to delivering his message directly is in the song he calls ‘Quiet Americans’. ‘If all the world is ending,’ he asks, ‘Where are the Americans?’ Even that title has a ring of Bowie about it.
Shearwater is one of those bands with a seemingly ever-changing lineup, and the roll-call for this latest record includes film composer Brian Reitzell, probably best known for his Lost In Translation soundtrack. His contributions no doubt have something to do with the record’s lush, cinematic textures. Yet I think there is another, quieter record that could make more of these songs, putting more emphasis on Meiburg’s lyrical and vocal strengths. Shearwater’s Jet Plane and Oxbow is a grower, though. It’s been out since early in the year and I feel like I’m just starting to grasp what a deep and detailed piece of work it is.
Songs featured: Prime, A Long Time Away, Wildlife in America, Filaments, Quiet Americans.
Jet Plane and Oxbow is available on Sub Pop Records
Topics: music
Regions:
Tags: Shearwater, music, music review
Duration: 7'59"
19:30
A Sailor's Guide To Earth by Sturgill Simpson
BODY:
Nick Bollinger delves into an album that combines soul horns and grunge anthems with classic country from Sturgill Simpson.
EXTENDED BODY:
Nick Bollinger delves into an album that combines soul horns and grunge anthems with classic country from Sturgill Simpson.
Sturgill Simpson is the kind of name that could somehow only belong to a country singer. Which is lucky, because Sturgill Simpson has the kind of voice that was made for country as well.
It’s a classic country voice – not an alt-country whimper but a big dark rumble, like the ghost of Waylon Jennings, returned to dispense outlaw justice. That voice got deserved attention with Simpson’s first two albums, the 2013 High Top Mountain and the following year’s Metamodern Sounds In Country Music. The latter title was particularly apt, because while Simpson has the voice of a traditionalist – and a terrific, tradition-steeped band to match – his concerns are a little wider, and more contemporary, than the old drinking-loving-fighting triangle of classic country. On Metamodern Sounds he didn’t just sing about whiskey, but also LSD, and he wasn’t just tipping his hat to Willie and Waylon but to Carl Sagan and Aldous Huxley. But on his new album, he’s shifted the frame yet again. And this time he’s both more traditional and more metamodern.
As with his earlier albums, there is an overarching theme to this latest one, and it’s one with a long tradition in country music: the birth of Simpson’s first son. He’s called the album A Sailor’s Guide To Earth, both a literal and metaphoric guise for a list of do’s and don’t-do’s from a father who has spent much of his life as an itinerant, firstly with the US Navy, then as a professional musician.
Simpson doesn’t spare the string section nor the piano player in the ballad that opens the set. Big feelings call for big gestures, and this one threatens to tip over in Billy Joel territory. But it’s just one indication that Simpson doesn’t see himself as some fringe, alternative anything, or is even fundamentally concerned with country traditions. His voice is country, that’s a given, and he’ll use whatever it takes to put it across; which might be a string section, or a soul band – and he has the great Dap Kings horn section supplying wind-power for several tracks on the album. Simpson might be thinking of great 70s country-soul crossovers, like Tony Joe White to Bobby Womack, but he must also recall that it was the Dap Kings who Amy Winehouse used just a decade ago for her big commercial crossover. At other times, Simpson steers his band into a place closer in spirit to ZZ Top.
But in a way the most ‘rock’ gesture on the album is one the quietest tracks - Nirvana’s ‘In Bloom’ given the full countrypolitan makeover. You sense Simpson’s genuine affection for the old grunge anthem, and I guess it has its place in the autobiographic picture he’s put together for his newborn son. Yet once again I wouldn’t discount an element of sheer commercial savvy.
What’s certain is that with each of his albums, Simpson’s reputation has grown and this one looks likely to take him well beyond the country cognoscenti, to people who don’t even think of themselves as country fans. With strings, horns, Kurt Cobain songs and rock pyrotechnics, A Sailor’s Guide To Earth dreams big, and might make Simpson the crossover star he deserves to be. Yet my favourite moments are still the ones where I feel I’ve just walked into some anonymous southern roadhouse and chanced upon the best bar singer I’ve ever heard.
Songs featured: Sea Stories, Welcome To Earth, Keep It Between the Lines, Sugar Daddy, Call To Arms.
A Sailor’s Guide To Earth is available on Thirty Tigers Records.
Topics: music
Regions:
Tags: Sturgill Simpson, music, music review
Duration: 9'33"
19:30
The Sampler for 26 April 2016
BODY:
In The Sampler this week Nick Bollinger discusses the front-line dispatches of PJ Harvey's The Hope Six Demolition Project; a lush 80s-style set from Austin alt-rock group Shearwater; and an album that combines soul horns and grunge anthems with classic country from Sturgill Simpson.
EXTENDED BODY:
In The Sampler this week Nick Bollinger discusses the front-line dispatches of PJ Harvey's The Hope Six Demolition Project; a lush 80s-style set from Austin alt-rock group Shearwater; and an album that combines soul horns and grunge anthems with classic country from Sturgill Simpson.
Topics: music
Regions:
Tags: PJ Harvey, Shearwater, Sturgill Simpson
Duration: 30'00"
=SHOW NOTES=
===8:30 PM. | Windows On The World===
=DESCRIPTION=
International public radio features and documentaries
===9:06 PM. | None (National)===
=DESCRIPTION=
===10:00 PM. | Late Edition===
=DESCRIPTION=
RNZ news, including Dateline Pacific and the day's best interviews from RNZ National
===11:06 PM. | None (National)===
=DESCRIPTION=
A selection world music, along with jazz, rock, folk and other styles, artists and songs with world and roots influences chosen and presented by Wichita radio host Chris Heim (6 of 12, KMUW)