Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

"Few British cities can match eye-catching York and its wondrous layers of history. Northern England’s walled city was founded by the ancient Romans, was conquered by the Vikings and also boasts a trove of medieval riches. The city’s storied history is woven into virtually every brick and beam. All these ingredients underpin York’s star-power, serving up a stirring sense of Ye Olde England, when tripping the UK. But it’s so much more than just a living museum." Read Mike's full article here. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Forsaken by Matt Rogers   In the twilight of his career, Logan learns he has been a vessel for furthering government interests, not a rogue hitman for a band of vigilantes. The revelation destroys him.  But when Jorge Romero – an investigative reporter and Logan's oldest friend – is brutally and inexplicably murdered, Logan allows his fury to deliver him from despair.  With an ally in Alice Mason, a homeless witness with a target on her back, Logan goes to war. Against whom, he isn't sure, but he knows powerful forces are at work behind the scenes.  Now, to deliver justice, Logan and Alice must confront their demons and win a savage battle that could destroy their lives... even if they survive.     Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson   In seven days Jet Mason will be dead.  Jet is the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Woodstock, Vermont. Twenty-seven years old, she’s still waiting for her life to begin. I’ll do it later, she always says. She has tim

On the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame Full Show Podcast for Saturday 26 July 2025, a man with up close and personal access to Tour de France, Kiwi bike mechanic Craig Geater joins the show to discuss his 21 years of experience on the Tour, his former years as Lance Armstrong's personal mechanic, and what it's like to travel behind his Jayco Ulula crew as they ride the mountains.  Jack considers the unstoppable force of a viral moment.  Francesca Rudkin gives her thoughts on whether the new Fantastic Four film meets expectations.  Mike Yardley shares the sights and sounds of ancient British city York.  And Estelle Clifford shares her favourite tracks from Yorkshire-born musician Billie Marten's new album Dog Eared.  Get the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame Full Show Podcast every Saturday on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Times are tough, many businesses unable to survive the cost of living crisis and downturned economy.  Cultural institutions and smaller businesses alike are closing up shop, and Kevin Milne is dismayed by the loss of Kiwi enterprises.  One in particular, the colourful Matakana ceramics firm Morris & James, is particularly saddening for him.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The number of Kiwis making withdrawals from their KiwiSaver due to hardship is on the rise.  In the year to June, more than 50,000 were made, compared to 18,000 five years ago.  Early withdrawals can have compounding effects on someone’s financial future – so what other options are there?  Lisa Dudson joined Jack Tame to delve into the topic and offer up some other ideas.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Last week we started to look at the jobs bugs do on Earth. This topic was launched by some teachers during the Blake Inspire sessions, out there in Nature. It became a bit of a game to question what their role is in ecological systems – especially critters that are usually perceived as a pain in the bum.  Gardeners often complain about almost every creature that inhabits the soil; holes and tunnels, little hills of clay, and messy poos in vegetable gardens, lawns, and orchards are often not seen as beneficial; but many certainly are!   These insects are the larvae and pupae of Crane Flies. Soil cleaning and dead wood in the soil – recyclers maintaining soil health.   Pollinators are everywhere: butterflies, flies, native bees, wasps, parasitic wasps, hoverflies, beetles, thrips – it’s a huge gig on the planet!   These laay eggs in their hosts. Population control.  Geotrupes spiniger – the Paua dungbeetle, introduced in New Zealand to put dung back into the soil. It not only puts

What's the news?  Fonterra has announced an On Farm Services incentive programme for qualifying farmer-shareholders.   The scheme allows farmers who meet their cooperative difference standard, a baseline performance and efficiency standard, to receive what is effectively a $1,500 yearly subsidy to invest in on-farm technology or services.   Ranges from animal performance tools from genetics companies, as well as pasture and data optimisation tools, and on-farm planting to improve carbon sequestration.   Pasture Management: Apps and dashboards, AI and satellite imagery to manage and optimise pasture on farms. Data optimisation: Farmers deal with so much data flowing in through so many on-farm touchpoints, some services aggregate all that info into key insights farmers can rely on to make good decisions.   Animal performance: Animal testing on their cows.     Why it matters   Obviously a massive deal – this contributes so much to on-farm costs and gives farmers a co

Washington Black   Follows the 19th century adventures of George Washington "Wash" Black, an 11-year-old boy on a Barbados sugar plantation who must flee after a gruesome death threatens to turn his life upside down (Disney+).     The Game   Detective Huw Miller is haunted by one case he failed to solve. As he settles into retirement, he suddenly thinks he has found the elusive killer in the shape of his new neighbour Patrick Harbottle (ThreeNow).    The Hunting Wives   Sophie trades city life for East Texas and falls into a wealthy socialite's magnetic orbit - where a clique of housewives hide deadly secrets (TVNZ+).    LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s no other way to say it – this cake is magical! The way the simple batter settles into layers of custard and sponge seems impossible and yet it works, and the tamarillos are all tart and jammy and YUM.        Ingredients  3 large eggs, room temp   2/3 cup sugar   90g butter, melted   1 ½ cups milk, lukewarm   1 tbsp vanilla extract   Generous 1/2 cup plain flour   1 ½ cups scooped and chopped tamarillos (about XX)    Icing sugar for dusting cake   Whipped cream or yoghurt to serve      Method  Preheat oven to 190 C. Grease and line a 20x20cm cake tin with baking paper.   Put a saucepan on with milk and butter and heat to lukewarm – this will melt the butter.   Separate eggs into two mixing bowls.    Beat the egg yolks and sugar until pale and light. Add in flour and mix until combined. Slowly add warm milk, beating until everything is well mixed together.    Beat the egg whites unt

The Fantastic Four: First Steps  Forced to balance their roles as heroes with the strength of their family bond, the Fantastic Four must defend Earth from a ravenous space god called Galactus and his enigmatic Herald, Silver Surfer.    Four Letters of Love  Nicholas and Isabel are made for each other, but as destiny pulls them together, family, passion and faith drives them apart. As they embark on journeys of heartache and misplaced love, fate soon contrives to pull the threads of their lives together.    LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the end it was only a matter of time.   It took a day or two of virality for the CEO caught cheating in the now truly infamous Coldplay kiss cam to publicly announce his departure from the company. I’m frankly surprised it took much longer for the woman caught canoodling in his arms to do the same thing. She was, after all, the Chief People Officer for the same company. On top of what I can only imagine is a personal calamity, the incident strikes me as a fairly grave professional conflict of interest. Indeed, the company that employed them both has announced that she is now gone, too.  I’m not gonna pretend to be all high and mighty. Like however many hundreds of millions or billions of people around the World, I found myself titillated by the video. It’s so dumb. So clumsy. Perfect fodder for a viral sensation.  But in the last few days, as the stories have continued, I’ve also found myself thinking a bit more about what the whole thing says about us more generally.   As consumers and

Who else could pull off the animal transformation of one of the world’s biggest rockstars but Wētā FX?  Wētā is well known for its visual effects mastery, and so when Robbie Williams said “make me an ape!”, it’s only natural that they were the ones for the job.  The man responsible for Williams’ simian visage in Better Man was Visual Effects Supervisor Luke Millar, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work.  A visual effects supervisor is responsible for coordinating all the different elements that comprise the visual effects of a production – most of which is invisible in many movies.  He told Jack Tame it’s about balance – everyone always wants more for less, and so being creative and efficient is the name of the game.  When it comes to Better Man, Millar got involved after working on the pre-visualisation work for the musical sequences before shooting began.  “After seeing a couple of those sequences, I read the script, and that was me,” he said.  “I was all in at that

Written over the course of twenty years, from 1993 to 2019, 'Strange Visions 1' details the apocalypse in a sci-fi infused, post-modern satirical manner.  It’s the work of underground artist, producer and engineer Quaint, part one of a project called 'Polar Extremes'. Estelle Clifford joined Jack Tame to give her thoughts on the album.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"It’s undoubtedly Britain’s equivalent to our Queenstown Lakes district. Windermere and the Lake District is England’s favourite national park, a sprawling tourist honeypot that stretches across hundreds of square kilometres of rugged Cumbrian countryside, woodland valleys, shimmering tarns and lakes – all backed by strikingly craggy mountains. It was the 18th century Romantic poets who captured the world’s imagination, igniting the region’s first tourism wave. Since then, the stature of the Lake District has only grown as a getaway destination, the wave has never crested, culminating in the district securing World Heritage status just eight years ago." Read Mike's full article here. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While we all have difficulty remembering and placing faces sometimes, some people are unable to do it altogether.  Prosopagnosia, otherwise known as face-blindness, is a psychological condition that renders people unable to recognise faces – sometimes including their own.  Dr Dougal Sutherland joined Jack Tame to delve into this rare condition.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Polkinghorne by Steve Braunias   In Polkinghorne, literary journalist Steve Braunias takes readers on an extraordinary and often chilling journey through the most high-profile murder case in modern New Zealand history.   With unparalleled access to the key players, Braunias offers readers his unique insight into the investigation, the trial and the astonishing revelations that kept the New Zealand public utterly transfixed. The death of Pauline Hanna in her home in Remuera, and the arrest of her husband, eye surgeon Dr Philip Polkinghorne, led to an epic trial that played out like a scandalous expose of rich Auckland life. Braunias pieces it all together and presents it as an unforgettable opera - including an extraordinary encounter that will leave readers stunned.   Fascinating, engrossing, and filled with unforeseen turns, Polkinghorne goes deep inside the courtroom case that shocked a nation and explores the lusts and torments that we try to conceal. This is a must-read for true crime enthu

Just spent a week with 30 teachers in various environmental locations of Auckland. The Sir Peter Blake Trust do this every year under the umbrella of BLAKE Inspire.   Learning outside is part of the curriculum: water quality, Matauranga Māori, rockpools, school gardens (with pigs etc), climate change, StarDome, political policy simulation, corporate sustainability, and good, old nature nerd stuff in forests and reserves.   Often the question comes up: what good do Mosquitoes do? And beetles? And weta?, etc.   Those are also the questions I receive on talkback radio – makes sense?   Teachers can use this knowledge in the curriculum and hence create Nature Literate students.   We need those invertebrates (they really don’t need us!).   In fact, when it comes to bugs that “invade” our homes, it pays to remember that we built our homes right on top of theirs. They are pretty generous about that, really: nice house you built on top of mine – might just move in with you!   They f

On the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame Full Show Podcast for 19 July 2025, Oscar-nominated visual effects artist at Wētā FX, Luke Millar joins Jack to discuss just how he turned one of the world's biggest pop stars into a chimpanzee for the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man. Plus, Millar shares his insight on AI's role within filmmaking.  Jack pays tribute to the legendary Fat Freddy's Drop producer Chris Faiumu.  Kevin Milne tells of his attempt to forge a pop music career with the help of the Fat Freddy's band.  Orange you glad it's citrus season? Nici Wickes shares a delicious orange cake recipe that stays fresh for days.  And Dr Bryan Betty drops in to discuss the newest weight loss medication available in New Zealand: Wegovy.  Get the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame Full Show Podcast every Saturday on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A new weightloss medication is now available in New Zealand – accessible on a private, nonsubsidised script.  Dr Bryan Betty joined Jack Tame to discuss Wegovy – what it is, how you use it, the side effects, and why people are seeking medical treatment for their weight.    What is Wegovy?   A once-weekly injection for weight loss known as a ‘GP-1 agonist’.   It mimics a hormone in the gut that reduces our desire to eat and controls sugar in the blood.   Developed originally for diabetes but found to help with weight loss, especially at higher doses.   The same drug at lower does is known as Ozempic, which is used for diabetes.     Is obesity a problem in New Zealand? Why medication? Shouldn’t we just eat better and move more?   We do have problem in New Zealand with obesity – it's a major heath issue.   Over a third population is classified as obese, and it costs the economy $2 billion a year in healthcare costs.  A good diet and exercise are crit

Weddings aren’t cheap – well, most of the time.   In New Zealand, the average wedding costs between $35,000 - $45,000, but depending on your tastes and needs, it can grow much higher.   The recent wedding between Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez cost somewhere between $20 million and $50 million USD – roughly 200 times more than what the average Kiwi spends.  However, one columnist points out that compared to their wealth, Bezos and Sanchez actually spent quite little.  So Kevin Milne is wondering, is it Bezos who’s being excessive, or is it the rest of us.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.