Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 03, 2026 i New Zealand Listener

Editor Kirsty Cameron Chief Subeditor Geoff Cumming Managing Editor Ruth Brown Art Director Derek Ward Books Editor Mark Broatch Entertainment & Arts Editor Russell Baillie Digital Editor Dionne Christian Content Producer Louise Barnes Subeditors Richard Betts, Bevan Rapson Senior Designer Richard Kingsford Designer Ingrid Schümann Editorial contact listener@aremedia.co.nz Contributors this issue: Mark Amery, Steve Bolton, Roger Brooking, Russell Brown, Michael Cooper, Sue Copsey, Paulette Crowley, Mark Fryer, David Harvey, Michele Hewitson, Paul Little, Danyl McLauchlan, Veronika Meduna, Simon Morris, Nicky Pellegrino, Jeremy Rees, Graham Reid, Cathrin Schaer, Craig Sisterson, Chris Slane, Marc Wilson, Simon Wilson, Redmer Yska Chief Executive Officer Jane Huxley General Manager Stuart Dick Editorial Director Sarah Henry Head of Digital Melissa Walsh Senior Digital Content Producer Katie Delany Sales Director Claire Chisholm For advertising enquiries please contact…

“We’re getting a bearded dragon, and he went to a reptile expo in New Jersey.” “I love you, Ricky, but if you win, I get to accept the award on your behalf, and you are going to thank God and the trans community.” “See Timothée Chalamet? He was 3 when you last won.” “But what do you do when something terrible happens and a big group of people, including those who are running our country, tells you it didn’t?” “KFC where you order your chicken has mandatory two-factor authentication, but Manage My Health does not.” “Could it be that God was an extra-terrestrial?” “His partner is in heat, and the bachelor is pumping with testosterone. He needs to release his energy and show who’s boss, even if his sparring partner…

The arrest of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s long-serving President, after a US military raid in Caracas has revived one of the most controversial criminal cases in recent American legal history. Maduro now faces prosecution in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, where federal authorities have pursued him for years over allegations of large-scale drug trafficking. The original indictment was obtained in March 2020, when prosecutors charged Maduro with narco-terrorism and related offences. The case alleged that he worked with international drug traffickers to move cocaine from Venezuela into the US. That indictment, along with a newly unsealed superseding version, provides an instructive contrast between American and New Zealand criminal procedure. New Zealand once used indictments in jury trials, but that terminology was abandoned after criminal procedure…

In the end the outsider became the insider; the counter culture he sprang from became the culture. Whether Tim Shadbolt was yelling through a megaphone at an anti-war protest in leafy Albert Park, towing his concrete mixer behind the mayoral limo, or waltzing across a polished dance floor, the force seemed to be with him. Blame his sunny optimism, the film-star looks inherited from his mother, the astonishing media savvy. And long before his death a week into the new year he’d become a toothy institution – familiar rather than famous; one of our most recognisable faces. And man, did he stand out. In a 2021 essay, Bob Harvey, a fellow West Auckland mayor, recalled his dominance of the Auckland University campus in the 1960s: “Tim was part of the…

I had been very much looking forward to talking to Tim Deane and I told him so. I would at last have a legitimate reason to bang on boringly and long-windedly about my adventures with sheep to a new and captive audience of one. We had something in common. He had no choice but to talk to me about sheep because, in his 50s he has gone from being what I call a flashy corporate geezer to being in the wool business. Which is where he started as a 16-year-old. Three years ago, Deane and his wife, Sarah, bought Norsewear, in the tiny North Island settlement of Norsewood, in the Tararua district. It makes, mostly, socks. And it makes only woollen socks, largely from merino wool. It is not quite…

THE INTELLIGENCE INTELLECTUALS: Social Scientists and the Making of the CIA by Peter C Grace (Georgetown University Press, $90) “At the end of the war the Soviets had 600 spies in the UK, US and Canada; the West had no one in the Soviet Union. When Donald Trump launched an incursion to depose Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, he was, you hope, well briefed by intelligence assessments: would Venezuela’s military pose a threat, would the populace rise up to support Maduro, could the economy collapse, what would other South American states do in response? Under the circumstances, a clear-eyed assessment would be essential. If the operation had been carried out in 1950, it is not at all certain the assessment would have been any good. Otago academic Peter Grace lays out in…

What does it mean to “act”? Khalid Abdalla is both an actor and activist. And Nowhere, the one-man work the British-Egyptian artist brings to Wellington in March, is about the hope and tension in being both. As an actor he’s best known for playing Dodi Fayed in Netflix’s The Crown, and the tech-bro billionaire target in The Day of the Jackal. Abdalla has long been cast along geopolitical lines: a 9/11 hijacker in United 93, an Afghani in The Kite Runner, an Iraqi in Green Zone and, In The Last Days of the City, a documentary maker in pre-revolutionary Cairo. Playing Fayed, he says from his home in London, had its surprises. “There was also this specific thing about playing Dodi in The Crown that I hadn’t anticipated. I hadn’t…

RNZ Concert FREEVIEW 51 SKY 422 iHeartRADIO rnz.co.nz/concert NB: Programme details are correct at the time of going to print; check RNZ website for updates SATURDAY News and Weather 6.00, 7.00, 8.00, 9.00, noon and 5.00pm 6.00 Summer Mornings Everything you need to start your day 10.00 Summer Days 3.00 Summer Afternoons 5.00 Inside Out with Nick Tipping Jazz favourites, standards and new releases 7.00 Met Opera 2026: I puritani by Bellini - Lisette Oropesa (Elvira Walton), Lawrence Brownlee (Lord Arturo Talbot), Atur Ruciński (Riccardo Forth), Christian Van Horn (Giorgio Walton), Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Metropolitan Opera Orchestra/Marco Armiliato 10.00 Summer Evenings Great music and good company as you relax into the evening 12.00am Music Through the Night SUNDAY News and Weather 6.00, 8.00, 9.00, noon and 5pm 6.00 Summer…

I was asked, by a person who teaches in a different part of the university, how to encourage attendance at lectures. Part of my answer is simple: make lectures relevant to students’ learning. I recently read an article by New York Times columnist David Brooks. The topic doesn’t matter so much as the validation I felt when he started with a personal anecdote and used that as the launch pad for the real subject matter of the column. If it wasn’t obvious, that’s the way my columns typically work; something that’s going on in my life or the world, and then a tenuous link back to the substantive focus of the column. Except perhaps Brooks gets to the point a bit quicker (and more elegantly) than I do. Why do…

1. The hottest temperature ever recorded in NZ was 42.4°C in 1973. Where? ❑Ashburton ❑Ruatoria ❑Blenheim ❑Rangiora 2. Dr Drake Ramoray is a fictional character seen on which TV sitcom? ❑ Seinfeld ❑Friends ❑ Big Bang Theory ❑ Parks and Recreation 3. The Limpopo River does NOT flow through which country? ❑South Africa ❑Botswana ❑Namibia ❑Zimbabwe 4. The movie 10 Things I Hate About You is an adaptation of which Shakespeare play? ❑ Romeo and Juliet ❑The Taming of the Shrew ❑ The Winter’s Tale ❑ Much Ado About Nothing 5. K is the symbol for which chemical element? ❑Silver ❑Krypton ❑Sodium ❑Potassium 6. France has no territories in North America. ❑True ❑False 7. “Let’s kill all the lawyers” is a famous line from a work by whom? ❑Tom Stoppard…

So what would Europe do if the United States, high on its own supply of military adventurism, decided to rampage in and annex Greenland, as President Donald Trump has said he wants to? The world’s largest island has been tied to nearby Denmark for several hundred years, first as a colony, later as part of the country. In 2009, Greenland was granted “selfgovernment” by Denmark and a path to independence. For the time being anyway, Greenland, via Denmark, is still part of Nato, the military alliance created after World War II that unites 30 European countries with the US and Canada. If one Nato member — say, the US — was to invade another Nato member, like Denmark, it’s unclear how other Europeans would react. We can be sure of…

THE EAGLE AND THE HART: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV by Helen Castor (Penguin, $38) “A king who was a tyrant was replaced by a king who was a usurper. In medieval times, the role of King of England brought with it certain expectations. This particularly applied if you were Richard II, your father was Edward the Black Prince and your grandfather King Edward III, legends in their own lifetime, renowned for chivalric values and battle heroics. Safe to say, then, that the path of a king who loathed the very thought of war, who’d prefer to be friends with the French rather than lay siege to their villes, was never going to be smooth. The Eagle and the Hart, by British historian Helen Castor, tells the…

SEVEN DECADES: How We Evolved to Live Longer by Michael D Gurven (Princeton University Press, $70) “Gurven answers a question many societies haven’t quite figured out: what’s the point of old people anyway? Seen from today, life in humanity’s distant past can look a lot like Thomas Hobbes’ old cliché: “nasty, brutish and short”. When our ancestors weren’t busy hunting and gathering food, they were dodging wild animals, enduring disease and violence, the dangers of childbirth and dying young, long before the 80-years-plus that we’ve come to expect in the wealthy West. Not so fast, says author Michael Gurven. Sure, a larger percentage of people survive into old age these days, but he argues that for a very long time – at least 50,000 years – humans have had the…

SATURDAY, JANUARY 24 THE FORSYTES Family financiers Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.45pm Streaming: TVNZ+ The Forsyte Saga trilogy by John Galsworthy, about a wealthy Victorian stockbroking family in 1880s London, have had the television treatment twice before, the first way back in 1967. This one, while filmed in the UK with a British cast and showing on Channel 5 there last year, comes backed by America’s Public Broadcasting Service, which can’t get enough of British period dramas. It’s written by the creator of the last decade’s Poldark series, Debbie Horsfield, and it stars Eleanor Tomlinson from that show as a Soho dressmaker and the first love of Jolyon “Jo” Forsyte Jr, the bohemian son of the family. The cast also includes Francesca Annis as Forsyte matriarch Ann, Stephen Moyer as Jolyon…

This cake will warm the hearts of the people you are feeding: a thick, dense and moist carrot cake, spiced with cloves, ginger and cinnamon and topped with a tangy orange cream cheese frosting. Using oil instead of butter results in a lighter texture and softer crumb, and the brown sugar imparts a wicked caramel flavour. It will keep well in an airtight container for up to 2 days, but it’s best to eat it on the day that you frost it. SPICED CARROT CAKE WITH MAPLE CREAM CHEESE FROSTING Serves 8 • 200ml vegetable oil • 285g dark brown sugar • 4 large eggs • grated zest and juice of 1 orange • 250g all-purpose flour • 1 tsp baking powder • ½ tsp baking soda • ¾ tsp…

Whatever else 2026 may bring, for kākāpō the year is off to a great start. The critically endangered, owl-faced night parrots breed only when rimu has a mass-fruiting season, known as a mast, and this summer the trees are pushing out so much fruit the Department of Conservation is expecting the best kākāpō breeding season since the recovery programme started three decades ago. Male birds already started booming in December on all three predator-free islands that host breeding populations. Pearl and Boss, a pair that kicked off the last two breeding seasons in 2019 and 2022, were again the first to mate on Whenua Hou Codfish Island, a small island to the west of Rakiura Stewart Island. More matings and nesting preparations are now underway. But with only 236 kākāpō…

“Told from multiple perspectives, this is an absorbing tale of smalltown secrets, alliances and betrayals. THE FIRST LAW OF THE BUSH by Geoff Parkes (Penguin, $38) One of several strong new voices to join the local crime, thriller and mystery writing scene (aka “yeah noir”) last year, Melbourne-based Kiwi Geoff Parkes returns to his home region of the King Country with this sequel to his excellent 1980s-set debut, When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole. A decade on from the events of the first book, former shearing gang member Ryan Bradley has returned to the remote town of Nashville, trying to make a go of a local law practice. Business may not be booming, but Ryan is still facing plenty of demands: the mayor wants him to toss his…

‘The locals often say we’ve gone from being one of the worst vineyards in the region – the weeds were higher than the vines – to one of the best,” says Kim Schofield, managing director of Dancing Water Winery, at Waipara, in North Canterbury. She’s talking about some of New Zealand’s oldest grapevines, planted in the early 1980s and now yielding chardonnay and pinot noir of arresting quality. Looking for new crops for his family farm, Derek Quigley – a cabinet minister in the Muldoon government and later co-founder of the Act Party– planted chardonnay and gewürztraminer vines in 1981. After buying the vineyard in 1986, Mark and Michelle Rattray replaced the gewürztraminer with pinot noir and more chardonnay and added scheurebe and sauvignon blanc. Ross Trowsdale and Clare Bisso…