Sam Heughan is farmer, fugitive and all round Scottish spunkrat Jamie Fraser in fantasy-drama Outlander, the second season of which arrived exclusively to Lightbox on April 10 this year. Longtime fan Tara Ward swallowed her nerves and spoke with Sam ahead of the premiere (please note, contains spoilers from season one). Originally posted March 24, 2016 Last … Read more
A Black woman living in New Zealand talks about this year’s infamous episode of Real Housewives, and why it’s indicative of a broader racist culture in New Zealand we still refuse to acknowledge. Originally posted September 23, 2016 This week’s episode of Real Housewives has left many people shocked. They cannot believe that there are … Read more
‘Business is Boring’ is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. In September Simon Pound spoke with telly star Brooke Howard-Smith about his little known past as a professional roller blade champion. What transpired was a story about how losing everything can be the best thing that ever happens to you. … Read more
It may surprise you to hear that not every article published on the Spinoff is read by tens of thousands of discerning punters. Here are some of the (relatively) neglected crop that we think warranted more click-love. Yesterday we published the top 20 most read posts of the year. Today we turn our attention to … Read more
Facts and ‘cloistered’ expertise were well and truly been put in their place by the Seven Sharp host this year. Siouxsie Wiles on a unique brand of smug bullshit Originally published on June 1, 2016 “Thank God the scientists aren’t running things!” So concluded Seven Sharp host Mike Hosking’s assessment on Monday night of calls … Read more
2016 marked the 35th anniversary of the MS-DOS operating system. The OS has since been used to power industry, calculate distances to faraway nebuli and discover the secrets of Shakespeare. Katie Parker used it to fight tree demons and mine space crystals. This is her story. Originally published April 20, 2016 Once upon a time, … Read more
Clicks and content, content and clicks: these are the posts that attracted the most eyeballs on friendly fledgling website ‘the Spinoff’ this year. Tomorrow we’ll be publishing the Spinoff stories that were unfathomably spurned by readers, but for today, these are the 20 most clicked-upon articles from 2016, in reverse order. 20 From June, Madeleine … Read more
A week after Leonard Cohen passed away in November, Bic Runga recalled memorising his songwriting advice, driving to his monastery and supporting him on tour in 2010. Originally published November 15, 2016 There aren’t too many artists I would call myself fanatical about, but Leonard Cohen is one of them. When I first started to write … Read more
The history of New Zealand television features plenty of lowlights, but few as low as the drunken and chaotic 1987 Listener Gofta Awards. Comedian Michele A’Court was there. First published January 14, 2016 It is possible that I am one of the few people who has fond memories of the 1987 Gofta Awards. It’s also … Read more
Is Christmas Day the best or worst day of the year? Spinoff Parents editor Emily Writes has crowd-sourced a list of the characters you’ll break bread with this Christmas. Tis the night before Christmas, and your house is a mess. The kids have gone feral, and you’re not feeling #blessed. You’re starting to sweat about lunch the … Read more
To launch our new science section this year we asked a dozen scientists and entrepreneurs how positive we can be that we’re progressing towards Sir Paul Callaghan’s dream of a transformed New Zealand through the use of science and technology. Originally published November 16, 2016 The Spinoff is thrilled to be launching today a new … Read more
FFS! It’s Xmas Eve, and you still haven’t done your Xmas shopping? We identify 10 kinds of readers and match them with 10 books published in 2016 guaranteed to bring pleasure and that. Non-fiction FOR SOMEONE WHO LIKES DRUGS Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany (Allen Lane, $55) by Norman Ohler * FOR SOMEONE WHO LIKES NEW … Read more
Who are the most powerful figures in the new generation of New Zealand literature? The most innovative, the most awarded, the most industrious? A panel of young experts exchanged their views over Snapchat and things like that until they agreed on the top 10. Originally posted October 31, 2016 1 Hera Lindsay Bird But not … Read more
Volume: Making Music in Aotearoa is currently on at Auckland Museum. Don Rowe visits, is astounded, and comes away considering a Southern Cross tattoo out of love for this country. Deep within the bowels of the Auckland Museum lurks the nucleus of music in New Zealand. Like some forbidden experiment, it’s sequestered behind sliding opaque … Read more
A brief note of festive gratitude as we plunge into hibernation (mostly) for a fortnight. The final Friday beer gong of the year has reverberated through Spinoff headquarters, and we are just about out of here. From tomorrow, our “Summer reissue” series begins, in which we showcase some of the best Spinoff writing of the … Read more
Henry Oliver sits down with Connan Mockasin and Liam Finn ahead of their collaborative performance, with Lawrence Arabia, at Wondergarden, a new music festival in Auckland this New Year’s Eve. The Spinoff: Have you been preparing musically or do you just need to be mentally prepared? Liam Finn: We’ve been preparing via email and text … Read more
We asked a whole bunch of people who are involved in music in different ways for their top three albums and songs of the year, both locally and internationally. Here are the results. We all love a good list. And if you love lists, December is a month like no other. ‘The Best of Everything … Read more
After much heated debate in the Spinoff television department, we present this list of local TV moments that made 2016 the weird and wonderful mess that it was. Mark Richardson apologises to Brendon McCullum on The Crowd Goes Wild The funniest four minutes of New Zealand television all year. It took fifteen long years but … Read more
We wanted to better understand the changing New Zealand economy, and who better to explain it than superstar economist Shamubeel Eaqub. This is the final of six short videos featuring Shamubeel giving it to us straight while sitting comfortably in a classic Kiwi chair. In the last episode Shamubeel takes all that we’ve learnt over … Read more
For the final Christmas episode of On the Rag, the gang look at the highs and lows for women in 2016. It’s the last episode of On the Rag, a podcast for people who consider themselves feminists every day of the week and definitely understand the dictionary definition of the word. To toast the year that was – … Read more
Every family celebrates Christmas in their own way. This week we’re hearing from families around New Zealand explaining what they celebrate and why they do. Here Eliza Jane talks about letting go of Christmas after converting to Judaism. Christmas was not a religious holiday in our family. More than anything, it marked the start of the … Read more
Tara Ward pours a sherry and peers back through the archives of a holiday institution: the Queen’s Christmas message. Her Majesty the Queen’s Christmas Message is perfectly timed for New Zealand audiences. Come hell or high water, at 6.50pm each Christmas Day Her Majesty drops her hot take on the year’s events, while we — … Read more
The Spinoff and Spark proudly present Pod On The Couch, a weekly podcast exploring music and the people that make it. This episode: troubadour James Milne and his new ready-for-action Christmas song. Just in time for the holidays comes Jingling Christmas Eve, a new Lawrence Arabia song created with James’ childhood friend Norman Angel. Henry Oliver and … Read more
Alex Casey wheels out a holiday favourite in the celeb-studded feature-length finale of Extras. Christmas is a time for traditions and rituals, for dredging up old articles about Love Actually and fighting with strangers online about whether the movie is good or bad. Although Hugh Grant dancing to ‘Jump’ is indisputably good, I would like … 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. Today’s guest is one of the people I’ve been most excited to … Read more
It’s been a huge year for local television, from the time Jordan Mauger did that Gollum impression to when Rachel McKenna walked out of Shortland Street forever. But which New Zealand show did you lot vote your favourite for 2016? C’mon, let’s go the results party. 10) Grand Designs NZ Grand Designs is Chris Moller’s … Read more
Middle-brow fiction, Hera Lindsay Bird, literary fiction, and studies of loneliness, death, and Flying Nun feature among the biggest-selling books of the year at the best bookstore in Auckland. 1 All the Light We Cannot See (Fourth Estate, $25) by Anthony Doerr So there you have it: the most popular book of the year is a novel … Read more
Thalia Kehoe Rowden, a former Baptist minister, and a mother of two writes about why God is part of her Christmas. Last Christmas we were in Thailand, where it’s not a public holiday. Santa is in every mall, but Jesus? Not so much. It didn’t make too much difference to us. The meaningful parts of … Read more
For many families Christmas isn’t about the birth of Jesus. Angela Cuming explains why she chooses to have a life, and Christmas, without religion. I was five years old when the Catholic Church told me I’d never get into heaven. An unbaptised child of two Roman Catholic parents, it had been a great aunt’s dying … Read more