Saturday Morning with Jack Tame

A sister to her previous album, Norah Jones has released her 9th studio album ‘Visions’.  

The album consists of a vibrant and joyful twelve tracks, celebrating the rollercoaster of life, feeling free, and wanting to dance. 

It's a stark contrast to her previous album, 'Pick Me Up Off The Floor', released early in the lockdown of 2020, foreshadowing many of the dark emotions that period invoked.

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The Women by Kristin Hannah 

An intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.  
Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. 
 
As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over- whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost. 
 
But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam. 

End of Story by A. J. Finn 

“I’ll be dead in three months. Come tell my story.” 

So writes Sebastian Trapp, reclusive mystery novelist, to his longtime correspondent Nicky Hunter, an expert in detective fiction. With mere months to live, Trapp invites Nicky to his spectacular San Francisco mansion to help draft his life story . . . living alongside his beautiful second wife, Diana; his wayward nephew, Freddy; and his protective daughter, Madeleine. Soon Nicky finds herself caught in an irresistible case of real-life “detective fever.” 
 
“You and I might even solve an old mystery or two.” 
 
Twenty years earlier—on New Year’s Eve 1999—Sebastian’s first wife and teenaged son vanished from different locations, never to be seen again. Did the perfect crime writer commit the perfect crime? And why has he emerged from seclusion, two decades later, to allow a stranger to dig into his past? 
 
“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.” 
 
As Nicky attempts to weave together the strands of Sebastian’s life, she becomes obsessed with discovering the truth . . . while Madeleine begins to question what her beloved father might actually know about that long-ago night. And when a corpse appears in the family’s koi pond, both women are shocked to find that the past isn’t gone—it’s just waiting. 

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Career progression seems to be on the back burner for many kiwis. 

Randstand’s latest Workmonitor report found that employees are prioritising flexibility and mental health over career progression. 

Over 27,000 people were surveyed, a thousand of whom were kiwis. 

Dr Dougal Sutherland joined Jack Tame to talk about this new data and offer some tips for businesses who want to proactively address these new priorities. 

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"Situated on the largest island in the archipelago, Grand Terre, New Caledonia’s bustling capital proudly flaunts its oh là là influence as a French overseas territory, where European chic mingles with laid-back Melanesian charm, set amid coconut palms in the swagger of a sea breeze. If you want a tropical island getaway with a little Parisian panache and the best baguettes in the South Pacific, you’ve come to the right place."

Read Mike's full article here.

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I remember Jack telling me he’d harvested his tomatoes in February and was pleased with the crop. 

I reckon that —especially in the North— tomatoes can go on and on and on; here in Canterbury they grow well into autumn (April, May) until the frosts start to play havoc. 

In my tunnel house I carry on harvesting them till June, sometimes July! 

This is what they look like in February/March:  

The green tomatoes are still on the plant. 

These will easily ripen as long as you water and fertilise the plants with a fruit-fertiliser (sufficient Potash – K). Keep trimming the laterals and keep tying up the vines to the stakes. 

Each week I do a thorough harvest of all the tomatoes that are ripe or almost ripe. 

Pink Berkely Tie-Dye is quite lovely coloured and firm, great for fried tomatoes with eggs. 

My biggest crop is F100 (sweet cherry tomatoes) that come in red and Brown-ish hues; The original F 100 is really long-lasting on the plant and keeps going the longest. It’s my standard variety that is best represented in the tunnel house. It’s also the basic tomato for roasted tomato sauce, creating the Bolognese for decent Italian meals 

Another good general processing tomato is “Tigerella”, this one goes on till May at least – sometimes well into June. 

Roasting them is a piece of cake; olive-oil over the top, plus some onions, paprika and later, basil. Not too high in temperature (150 is usually enough), blitz them when done, if you like, and freeze them in ziplock bags and you’ll have tomato sauce for the year. 

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With everyone talking about mortgages and interest rates, it's easy to forget that property is just one part of your overall wealth plan and strategy.  

Hannah McQueen joined Jack Tame for a chat about the considerations people should have towards long-term wealth creation and what homeowners should be preparing for once the housing market has settled again. 

And, if you're not interested in property, how to choose your investment strategy while the markets are down.   

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Xtra says there are 260,000 email accounts which will need to start paying.  

From May 16th, 2024 Xtra Mail will be $9.95 a month, or $5.95 a month if you're a Spark customer with broadband, a monthly mobile plan or a landline (That works out to be $71.40 per mailbox per year, almost $18 million a year for all those customers). 

So where to from here? What are your options? 

If you choose to go somewhere else, Xtra says it has a free email forwarding service. Free services are available from Gmail or Hotmail/Outlook, you may get ads or your data may be used for targeting ads. Microsoft Outlook has the option to go "premium", which is an ad-free experience for $3 a month, or you can bundle it with a Microsoft 365 subscription for $129 a year, or $179 for a family plan. 
 
A .nz domain name is going to be about ~$20 a year, then you need to pay for a mail service on top of that.  Fastmail is an option for US$2.50 a month, there are also offerings from Proton Mail (Swiss based), Hey (US based) or Zoho (India based). Google Workspace is US$6 per user per month, and Microsoft 365 is NZ$9.70 a month. 

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Curb Your Enthusiasm  

The final season of the long-running show sees Larry David star as an over-the-top version of himself in this semi-improvised comedy series that shows how seemingly trivial details of day-to-day life can precipitate a catastrophic chain of events. (Neon) 

James Must-A-Pic His Mum a Man  

Imagine being tasked with finding your mum the love of her life in front of the nation. That’s exactly what comedian James Mustapic sets out to do in his new show James Must-a-pic His Mum a Man. Alongside his mum, Janet, the 2023 Celebrity Treasure Island winner will vet potential candidates in the reality/comedy series, ensuring hilarity ensues along the way. (TVNZ+) 

The Regime  

The Regime is an American political satire television miniseries from HBO starring Kate Winslet, depicting a year within the palace of a crumbling authoritarian regime. (Neon) 

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Named by IndieWire as one of the best actors to have never received an Academy Award nomination, Guy Pearce has had quite the prolific career.  

The Aussie actor has stared in over 400 episodes of Neighbours, L.A. Confidential, Memento, and The Time Machine, but his breakout role was in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert back in 1994.  

He’s returning to kiwi cinemas in a week’s time with The Convert, the third collaboration between director Lee Tamahori and producer Robin Scholes. 

The film is a historical drama, depicting pre-colonial Aotearoa New Zealand and Māori Culture. A lay preacher arrives at a British settlement in 1830s New Zealand, his violent past is drawn in to question and his faith is put to the test as he finds himself caught in the middle of a bloody conflict between Māori tribes.  

Pearce plays preacher Thomas Munro, telling Newstalk ZB’s Jack Tame that he found the script very raw, moving, and fascinating. 

“It was just very emotional, and I could really see myself as that character.” 

The film is set in a New Zealand context, but the content translates to an international audience, Pearce telling Tame that no matter what the narrative is the idea of a white colonial man taking over or delving into indigenous culture is something that people in many countries can relate to.  

The Convert is more than a two-dimensional depiction of colonialism, director Lee Tamahori aiming to take that narrative and make more of a human story, centring connection and compassion regardless of culture, history, and background. 

For Pearce, the crux of the story was his character’s development. 

“We’re finding a character who’s been traumatised and is looking to find himself and in, in discovering this other culture, he is, he is allowed to then find himself and he therefore owes this other culture.” 

“His life was the crux of the story in a way,” he told Tame. “Certainly for me, selfishly, it was the crux of the story.” 

This project wasn’t the first time Pearce met Tamahori, but it was the first project they’d worked on together, and Pearce said it was beyond his expectations. 

“To witness that wonderful, brilliant intelligence, inspirational kind of outlook that he has, to witness that on a daily level and to be a part of it, and to, you know, he’s so joyful.” 

“He’s got such a beautiful kind of energy, and an inspiring quality that you just want to be around him.” 

Pearce has had an extensive career, and his success means that he can now be discerning in the projects he chooses to be involved in. 

“I just do the things that move me, you know. I’ve always done that.” 

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How To Have Sex  

Three British teenage girls go on a rites-of-passage holiday - drinking, clubbing and hooking up, in what should be the best summer of their lives. 

20 Days in Mariupol  

As the Russian invasion begins, a team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting the war's atrocities. 

Quick mention  

The Oscar’s are on March 11th - we can watch them on Disney+ in NZ.  

Red carpet 11.30am and ceremony 2pm. 

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Late season peach or nectarine crumble is just the best! Make these individual fruit crumbles, they’re fabulous! 

Serves 2 

Ingredients 

2 large peaches or nectarines, halved, stones removed 

1-2 tablespoons golden syrup or maple syrup 

¼ cup rolled oats 

2 tablespoons brown sugar 

1 tablespoon plain flour 

2 tablespoons butter 

Small handful of nuts – almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts – chopped 

Yoghurt, cream and/or ice cream. 

Method 

Heat oven to 180 C and grease a small ovenproof dish. 

Place fruit in dish, cut side up. Generously brush the fruit with golden syrup or maple syrup. 

Mix together dry ingredients and rub in the butter. Add the nuts. 

Fill the holes of the fruit with crumble. Scatter over any leftover crumble. Drizzle in a little water – just enough to cover the bottom of the dish. 

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until fruit is lovely and soft and the crumble is golden. 

Serve with yoghurt, whipped cream and/or ice cream. 

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TNVZ announced a raft of cuts yesterday, with nearly 70 members of staff facing the axe and Sunday, Fair Go, Tonight, and Midday all on the chopping block. 

Kevin Milne was Fair Go's longest serving host, and finds the loss of the show to be a great shame not only personally, but for regular kiwis who will no longer have that weapon available to them.

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It was an awful day in my household and office yesterday, as TVNZ joined its free-to-air mates at Warner Brothers Discovery in announcing massive cuts to news gathering operations. 

My wife Mava is a reporter on Sunday, and for many, many years I’ve worked with the teams on Sunday, Fair Go, Tonight, and Midday. They are my colleagues and friends. As anyone in any industry who has gone through a restructure or been made redundant will know, it’s a personally devastating thing to experience. 

Perhaps I’m biased, but I do think the news business is a bit different to other businesses. I think it contributes to the strength of our democracy and the vibrancy of our society in ways that can’t be measured on a balance sheet. I think it celebrates and reflects us, and I think well-resourced journalism is our single most effective check on power. 

When it comes to the TV business, it’s clear the traditional economic models are no longer fit for purpose. In the digital age, traditional TV plays a less prominent role in our lives than it once did. Advertising dollars move from the telly to the likes of Google and Meta, instead. The gazillions they make in profits are mostly shipped offshore. 

Of course, people in my industry should have seen this coming. And for the most part they have. I’m not saying there aren’t things they couldn’t have done differently, innovations they could and should have made, but ultimately the force of those digital giants is irrepressible. Trying to save free-to-air commercial TV, with quality news, current affairs, and local programming, in a country with five million people... is like trying to bail out the Titanic with an empty ice cream container. I’m not aware of any comparable broadcast markets where they’ve managed to pull it off. 

TV and moving pictures still have a certain magic. Radio has intimacy. But TV is the only medium where you can both hear the crack in the politician’s voice and see the flash in their eyes when a hypocrisy is exposed. At moments of national or international significance... natural disasters, pandemics, we can get information from several sources, but for the collective experience, we still turn to telly. 

And there is an extra power that comes with TV currents affairs. Think about the kinds of stories that have been exposed in New Zealand. I remember as a kid in Christchurch, when the doctor Morgan Fahey was exposed by TV3’s 20/20 for sexually abusing his patients. I was eleven years old and I remember it. It was profound, devastating journalism... a story which has stuck in my head for more than 25 years. 

Consider Kristin Hall and Sunday’s extraordinary recent investigation into emergency housing in Rotorua. News reports about that issue popped up from time to time on various news websites, but it took moving pictures, careful storytelling, meticulously-produced, expensive current affairs, to drive home the full scale and significance of those abuses. It took the power of telly to affect change. 

If we value these things, one way or another we have to pay for it. From a purely economic perspective, if the commercial model is broken, the only other real viable option is a regulatory response. 

Of course I’m biased, but I’d argue the value of journalism should be measured in more than dollars and cents. Maybe you disagree. Maybe you think a number of newish, small, independent, digital outlets fills the gap left by the shows that are dying. I think I’d be more open to that argument if the overall number of journos in New Zealand wasn’t massively, steadily dropping. 

The traditional TV companies might be poor, but without something meaty in place of Newshub, Sunday and Fair Go, our society and our democracy are poorer too. And by the very nature of the work they do and the vital stories they tell, we will never know what we have lost. 

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Iconic kiwi band L.A.B. has just dropped their latest album ‘VI’. 

It’s their sixth album in seven years, a total of nine tracks with cruisey summery vibes. 

They celebrated the album's release with a performance at Electric Avenue in Christchurch. 

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Lone Wolf by Greg Hurwitz 

Once a black book government assassin known as Orphan X, Evan Smoak left the program, went deep underground, and reinvented himself as someone who will go anywhere, and risk everything to help the truly desperate who have nowhere else to turn. Since then, Evan has fought international crime syndicates and drug cartels, faced down the most powerful men in the world and even brought down a President. Struggling with an unexpected personal crisis, Evan goes back to the very basics of his mission - and this time, the truly desperate is a little girl who wants him to find her missing dog. 

The Wartime Book Club by Kate Thompson 

From enchanting cliff tops and white sandy bays to the pretty cobbled streets of St Helier, Jersey is known as the land of milk and honey. But for best friends Bea Rose (the local postwoman) and Grace Le Motte (who works in the island's only library) it becomes the frontline to everyday resistance when their beloved island is occupied by German forces in 1940. 

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Shōgun 

Set in Japan in the year 1600, Lord Yoshii Toranaga is fighting for his life as his enemies on the Council of Regents unite against him, when a mysterious European ship is found marooned in a nearby fishing village (Disney+). 

Constellation 

When a fatal accident occurs on board the International Space Station, a lone astronaut makes the heroic journey back to Earth, only to discover key pieces of her life —including her young daughter— have changed (Apple TV+). 

The Completely Made Up Adventures of Dick Turpin 

Dick Turpin is a legendary British motorway robber, whose success is defined mostly by his charm, showmanship and great hair. Together with his gang of rogues, he sets out on new adventures, all while trying to escape the clutches of a thief-taker (Apple TV+). 

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Dune: Part Two  

Paul Atreides unites with Chani and the Fremen while seeking revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the universe, he must prevent a terrible future only he can foresee. 

The Great Escaper  

In the summer of 2014, a World War II veteran sneaks out of his care home to attend the 70th anniversary commemoration of the D-Day landings in Normandy. 

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"Remote and wind-blasted Farewell Spit is a sweeping 30km-long sliver of sand that arcs east, buffering Golden Bay from the Tasman Sea. If you’ve never done it before, revel in this singular environment, by hopping onboard a Farewell Spit Eco Tour, for a 6 hour journey of discovery."

Read Mike's full article here.

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Load shifting is one of the best things we can do to ensure we are using renewable energy sources instead of non-renewables. But what is load shifting? 

Load shifting is simply moving power use to different times of the day. Turning large appliances on at off peak times, setting timers, charging EVs overnight etc. 

Kate Hall joined Jack Tame to discuss the benefits of load shifting and its ability to save kiwis hundreds of dollars a year. 

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In NZ, we have a number of wasp species that can cause a few problems: 

1) German Wasps (arrived after WW2) Vespula germanica 

2) The Common Wasp (arrived in the 1970-s) Vespula vulgaris 

Both these two species sting – no sense of humor! 

They nest in cavities: hollow trees, wall cavities and hollow trunks of trees, in your ceiling or roof space, etc. 

These wasps are often found eating honeydew in native forests, especially in the South Island. 

They will also hunt for insects (protein) in your garden (Monarch butterfly caterpillars and other sizeable insects). 

The Vespula species are tricky to control, kill and remove – best left to professional pest controllers. 

3) Australian Paper Wasp (been here for more than 100 years) Polistes humilis 

4) Chinese Paper Wasp (since 1979) Polistes chinensis 

5) European Paper Wasp (Since 2016) Polistes dominula 

These guys and girls sting too! 

Paper wasps do not go for the sweet stuff; they eat mostly caterpillars. Not a problem when they go for white butterfly caterpillars that damage your broccoli etc, but killing our native insects is not welcome. 

A few weeks ago —in Bannockburn— I ran into Susie Bassett of Waspol NZ Ltd collecting nests of paperwasps. This Company is based in Nelson. (Facebook Waspol NZ) 

They send the wasps (frozen) to US immunotherapy Laboratories where they develop products to desensitise people that are seriously affected by wasp stings through acute allergies. 

Wasp species have unique versions of venom – immunotherapy can save lives! 

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