Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the long-awaited – and outstanding – novel by Marlon James, who won the Man Booker prize four years ago with A Brief History of Seven Killings. It was some canny marketing to release a book self-described as the “African Game of Thrones” just before the final season on TV of the actual Game of … Read more
Thanks to a rapidly increasing population and some savvy young returnees, these days the Tron oozes quiet self-confidence. Follow the motorway south from New Zealand’s biggest city, past the fertile vegetable-growing soils of Pukekohe, the Hampton Downs race track and the historic battle site at Rangiriri, along the mighty Waikato River (where at every bend … Read more
In the latest episode of her RNZ podcast BANG! Melody Thomas speaks with kinky Kiwis about what they’re into, how they negotiate consent, and what vanilla relationships could learn from their communities. Kink is described as activities and fantasies falling outside of the “normal” boundaries of sex and intimacy. But what is normal? Light choking … Read more
More survivors of sexual violence at Knox College have come forward since Critic broke the story of sexual abuse and harassment at the Otago University hall of residence a month ago. Content warning: sexual assault and harassment. This story is published today in Critic Te Arohi, the Otago University student magazine. Original reporting by Esme Hall … Read more
An autumnal tipple to warm the cockles. Right on cue, the weather gets cooler, the clocks go back and autumn is well and truly here. Should you still be clutching onto summer and tall glasses of crisp apple cider, then let this be your panacea. Full of warming spices and zesty orange, it warms the … Read more
A sitcom starring Pamela Anderson as a bookstore employee in 2005? We’re already laughing. Sam Brooks writes about the dusty two-season wonder that was Stacked. Imagine, for a moment, that you’re an American television network in 2005. Friends has just ended its ten year run, and that format of sitcom (friends do problematic things with guest stars) … Read more
In our new Q&A series, The Lightbulb, we ask innovators and entrepreneurs to tell us about how they turned their ideas into reality. This week, we talk to Hello Cup’s Robyn McLean on what sparked the move into menstrual cups. Since launching in December 2017, Hawkes Bay-based start-up Hello Cup has helped introduce menstrual cups … Read more
Our current understanding of infertility is limited and leads to unfair stigma, Hannah Gibson writes. Ask most people what they think infertility is, then they will most likely answer ‘it is when you can’t have children.’ It is nearly always contexualised contrary to the idea of ‘fertility’, sitting in opposing categories and corners from one … Read more
Dietary Requirements is The Spinoff’s monthly podcast in which we eat, drink and talk about it too, with special thanks to Freedom Farms. The Dietary Requirements crew had been anticipating the arrival of Duck Island’s first non-Hamilton shop for months, so when the dreamy ice cream parlour finally opened its doors in Ponsonby, we thought what … Read more
Twenty-five years ago, Nathan Haines released Shift Left, New Zealand’s biggest selling jazz album of all time. On the eve of its anniversary reissue, Graham Reid takes a look at the album’s genesis and impact. This piece has been republished with permission from Audioculture. In 1994 Nathan Haines released his debut album Shift Left, an album which … Read more
The Spinoff is proud to debut a major new musical work by singer-songwriter Hayden Donnell. After National Party leader Simon Bridges last month misled The Spinoff over the post-15/3 removal of a controversial petition, the deletion was blamed on an “emotional junior staffer”. The emotional junior staffer was later revealed to have worked for National … Read more
There are two weeks; 14 days; 336 hours of school holidays to fill. What better way to fill it than a bunch of great TV? Tara Ward runs down the best TV and movies on Lightbox to watch with your kids these school holidays. It’s school holiday time again, which means the children of Aotearoa … Read more
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to Dan Mclaughlin and Mark Neal, co-founders of … Read more
A new Gambling Advertising Code has been announced that closes a loophole which saw offshore online casinos preying on vulnerable Kiwi gamblers while local operators were shut out. In May last year, a Spinoff investigation found JackpotCity, one of five online casinos operated by a shady ‘global gaming and entertainment group’ licensed in Malta, … Read more
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the final week of Married at First Sight Australia, with special thanks to Nando’s. It’s been a long and emotional journey full of highs, lows, onesies and toaster pizzas, but Married at First Sight Australia is finally over. Join us as we try to make sense of the final explosive dinner … Read more
Christchurch-born Theia’s second EP Not Your Princess drops today. Sam Brooks chats with the singer about her new music and her video for International Women’s Day. Theia’s first self-titled EP was released two years ago, and it was a stunning artistic statement. The production was lush, her voice had a distinctive husk to it, and the … Read more
The only published and available best-selling book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Necessary Secrets by Greg McGee (Upstart Press, $38) Stand by for a Spinoff review. 2 Auckland Architecture: A Walking Guide by … Read more
Alex Casey reflects on the most dramatic season of Married at First Sight in history. Looks like we made it. Three months. 41 episodes. Well over 60 hours. Two cheating scandals. One multi-million dollar fraud conviction. One virginity lost. Zero moments of calm. This season of Married at First Sight has truly been like no … Read more
There is a ‘climate of fear’ and a rising white supremacist movement on campus, say a group of students at the University of Auckland. Don Rowe reports. Students at the University of Auckland met last night to discuss what they say is a growing white supremacist movement on campus, and their concerns the university is dragging … Read more
You’ve probably seen the image, but have you been secretly wondering why it’s such a big deal? NZ cosmologist and physicist Professor Richard Easther explains. Mathematically, a black hole is empty space. It is not so much that a black hole has mass; rather, the black hole is a pucker in the fabric of space, … Read more
Cheat sheet: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has finally been forced out of his cupboard in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. But why now? And what is he actually facing charges on? Alex Braae has a cheat sheet for you. What’s all this then? Overnight, a bearded and haunted looking Julian Assange was dragged (yes, literally) … Read more
After falling head-over-heels for Heartbreak Island, her first reality TV crush, Anna Knox returned eagerly for season two. Turns out there’s nothing like a first love to break your heart. I was genuinely looking forward to watching Heartbreak Island again. Wanderlust, Homeland and Unreal had been my TV diet for the previous weeks, and I … Read more
New poetry by author Erik Kennedy. Out on the Pleasure Pier Out on the pleasure pier on that benign afternoon, the air heavy with the blossom of vinegar and old tyres, you asked what was the closest I had come to death. I thought of when I had applied the bolt-cutters to that … Read more
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Strange political stoush over Pharmac, spy bosses concerned about political interference from overseas, and DOC investing heavily in 1080 alternatives. This story happened earlier in the week, but it’s worth going back to, to cover in depth. Government MPs have blocked a Select Committee inquiry into Pharmac, … Read more
There’s something about universities that make entitled young men feel safe pushing the boundary between consensual sex and rape – and it has to change, writes Jai Breitnauer. Admittedly, when I saw my old higher education institute, the University of Warwick, hit UK headlines earlier this year over a group rape chat scandal, I wasn’t … Read more
The livestreamed atrocity in Christchurch has put into sharp focus the pernicious potential of online media, and the ways that misinformation can erode democracy. Russell Brown explains Four weeks on, it has expressed the best of us. And the worst of us. On the one hand, social media has provided a valuable platform for public grieving. It … Read more
Now that the Herald has dropped its syndicated Alex cartoon, there’s a glimmer of hope that New Zealand’s moribund newspaper cartooning scene might finally let in some new blood. Toby Morris has 10 suggestions for cartoonists to consider. If you get your news from social media, you might be feeling like the state of cartooning … Read more
Living in a city polluted with dirty air is among many facts of life that Londoners pay for, not just with money but with our health, writes Elle Hunt. There is a company that sells aerosols of “100% pure Australian air”, “farmed” from pristine locations including Tasmania and the Blue Mountains, for AU $246.24 for … Read more
This Sunday, two Charlotte Grimshaw novels come to the screen in the form of The Bad Seed. She writes about the experience of having her work adapted for TV. This month, a small team arrived at my door. As part of publicity for the adaptation of my novels The Night Book and Soon into TV … Read more