Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

The Union   Mike, a down-to-earth construction worker, is thrust into the world of super spies and secret agents when his high school sweetheart, Roxanne, recruits him on a high-stakes US intelligence mission (Netflix).   The Three Musketeers: Milady   Constance Bonacieux is kidnapped before D'Artagnan's very eyes. In a frantic quest to save her, the young musketeer, aided by Athos, Porthos and Aramis, is forced to join forces with the mysterious Milady de Winter.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lovers often meet under the night sky, stargazing a cliché of the romance genre. But do other celestial bodies carry the same romantic energy?   Kevin Milne is wondering if blue moons, and blue supermoons in particular, bring romance into people’s lives. He wouldn’t have thought so, but this week’s blue supermoon has stirred some memories and emotions.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Leeks are so underrated and I have to remind myself to use them for more than just soups and chicken pies. In these tarts they are the star and as well as looking pretty they are absolutely scrumptious with soft and sweet, leeks combining with the tang of parmesan and saltiness of prosciutto. Perfect really!    Makes 4    Ingredients  3-4 leeks, cut into 2cm thick rounds (to yield about 16-20)  30g butter  2 sheets savour short crust pastry   1 tbsp olive oil   4 eggs  150g crème fraiche   200mls cream   ½ tsp wholegrain mustard  ¼  tsp sea salt + pinch black pepper  100g parmesan, grated + extra chunks for tops   50g prosciutto     Method  1. Preheat oven to 180 C. Place oven tray in to heat.   2. Line four 12cm tart tins (or one large 25cm) with pastry and trim edges neatly. Chill for 20 minutes.   3. Carefully place leek rounds in a pan with butter and oil, cover and cook gently until they begin to soften and are cooked through - about 20-30minutes. Turn once halfway through cooking but do so carefully as

13-year old Jack Tame would never have believed that Scott Robertson and Leon MacDonald weren’t getting along.   The year was 2000.  Having survived Y2K, started high school, and become a teenager in the space of a few short months, the highlight of my year was yet to come: May 20th, when the Canterbury Crusaders defeated the ACT Brumbies by a single point at Bruce Stadium in Canberra to become Super Rugby Champions for the third year in a row, the first team to achieve the feat.  It is amazing to go back and look at that starting 15. We didn’t know it then, but several of the winning Crusaders would end up becoming successful coaches after their playing careers were done. Winning finalists included Todd Blackadder, Daryl Gibson, and Mark Hammett, all of whom have enjoyed pretty high-profile coaching careers. The Crusaders’ second-five-eighth was a guy called Mark Robinson, who in years to come would be appointed the CEO of New Zealand Rugby. We didn’t know it then, but in a couple of decades, he would hire h

An author with a pen game strong enough to reduce people to tears, Jodi Picoult has quite an extensive and well-loved body of work.  She’s written nearly 30 books, selling around 40 million copies, with fan favourites such as My Sister’s Keeper, Mad Honey, and Wish You Were There flying off the shelves.   Picoult writes across a diverse scope of genres, from thriller to romance to ghost stories, and her latest work steps into the world of historical fiction.   By Any Other Name details the intertwining narrative of the woman many believe was the real playwright behind the work of William Shakespeare alongside a contemporary story of a New York author suffering the same fate of being silenced.  Picoult joined Jack Tame for a chat about how this new story came to be, her love of Shakespeare, and the meticulous research she puts into the narratives she creates.  "To me this is really a book about how women have been written out of history by the men who were writing it." LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener

Album 8 in his 10|10|10 project is Troy Kingi’s ‘Leatherman & The Mojave Green’.   The album is described as a “sun-baked excursion into desert / stoner rock sonics”, released August 16th 2024.  Estelle Clifford joined Jack Tame to give her thoughts on the release.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Act of Disappearing by Nathan Gower  Julia White is struggling: her bartending job isn’t cutting it and her first book has sold hardly any copies. She’s broke, barely able to make ends meet while drowning in her late mother’s medical bills and reeling after a one-night stand with her ex-boyfriend, who’s now completely ghosted her. Enter Johnathan Aster, world-renowned photographer, with a proposal: he has a never-before-seen photograph of a woman falling from a train bridge, clutching what appears to be a baby. And he wants Julia to research the story.  Alternating between present-day Brooklyn and Kentucky as it enters the 1960s, the story unfolds as Julia races to find answers: Who was the woman in the photograph? Why was she on the bridge? And what happened to the baby? Each detail is more propulsive than the last as Julia unravels the mystery surrounding the Fairchilds of Gray Station and discovers a story more staggering than anything she could have imagined.    I Will Ruin You by Linwood Barclay  Ho

"Just imagine taking a jaunt to Calypso’s Cave, where the nymph Calypso held Odysseus as a prisoner of love for seven years in Homer’s epic Odyssey. How about taking to the waters in the Blue Lagoon or gazing in awe at the Crystal Caves of Comino? Malta’s neighbouring islands of Gozo and Comino are full of history and wonder. I recently travelled to the Maltese islands with Insight Vacations, on their 6-day Easy Pace Malta premium guided tour. It offers the winning mix of guided sightseeing and flexi-time, allowing you to ample opportunity to personally discover and savour the destination’s treats, at your own leisure." Read Mike's full article here. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame Full Show Podcast for Saturday 18 August 2024, Bestselling Author Jodi Picoult is an author with a pen game strong enough to induce real tears, she joins Jack ahead of the release of her 29th book.   Of all the global stars to rise from this year’s Olympic Games —Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, Dame Lisa Carrington— 36-year-old Macquarie University lecturer Rachael Gunn is perhaps the unlikeliest. Jack talks about why Australian breakdancer Raygun is an icon.   Francessca Rudkin shares two marvellous films, ‘The Hardest Line’, a music documentary on Midnight Oil and ‘The Instigators’, starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck.  Troy Kingi is back with a new album “Leatherman & the Mojave Green”, Estelle Clifford shares her thoughts.   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.

Kate “Ethically Kate” Hall is a fan of the sustainable options. She recently received a comment on a DIY project where she dried avocado pips to make buttons saying that they’ll “just buy my own buttons like a normal person”, and while sure, that is an option, sometimes it’s fun to do things a little differently.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Blackcurrants pruning  Oh… good old Ribes nigrum! It’s one of our favourite fruits – Juuls makes pretty mean jam out of those dark berries. You can eat them raw off the plant, but honestly… jam is the way to go as far as I’m concerned.  They hail from the temperate areas of Central and Northern Europe and Asia – yep, they can deal with frosts.  Blackcurrants are usually grown as multi-stemmed plants, with an open structure of 6–10 upright stems growing from the base.   Established bushes (aged four years or older) are best pruned every winter to keep them fruiting strongly. This is a simple process – cut out up to a third of the oldest stems down at the base, create some space in the middle. The younger stems will then rise up to produce fruit for the next few years.   Red Currants pruning is slightly different from Blackcurrants.  From late winter to early spring – prune all forms of red and white currants annually while the plants are still dormant, before any signs of growth appear.  Red and white currants

What is Carpal Tunnel and who gets it?  - One of the most common hand conditions.  - Pressure on something called ‘median nerve’ that goes through the wrist.  - The nerve goes through a narrow ‘tunnel’ (carpal tunnel) in the wrist, and when it gets compressed, you can develop symptoms.  - 1-5% of the population get it at some point. Twice as common in women as men.  - Most often seen in those between 30 and 60 years of age.  - Increased risk with pregnancy, diabetes, wrist injury, obesity, and repetitive wrist activities such as manual labour and sport.     How do you recognise it?  - People often start to notice it at night: wake up with a tingly or numb hand and have to shake the hand out. Especially prominent in the thumb, and index, and middle fingers.  - Sometimes described as electric shock, sometimes holding the steering wheel of car, holding a newspaper.  - May be described as pain, and people often get discomfort up the forearm.  - Can cause hand weakness and cause people to drop things.     How do y

Fortnite is back on the iOS store  But it's only for those in the EU, thanks to their Digital Markets Act. It's forced Apple to offer a pathway for app developers to sell their software without needing to go through Apple's official app store.  Epic says Apple has a monopoly on the market, and uses that position to force developers to give up to 30% of their revenue to them. They reportedly earn $70 billion in app store revenue each year. The "Epic Games Store" is the highest profile launch of an alternative app store yet, with a large fan base eager to get back to playing Fortnite on their phones after four years. Apple has not made the process for installing easy though - there are warning screens to get through, settings to update, which Epic says is intentional to make the experience as terrible as possible. Apple has launched a new fee for successful off-app store they're calling a "core technology fee", to try and recoup some of the revenue they'll inevitably lose. This is going to be a case study for o

Douglas is Cancelled   Douglas Bellowes is a widely respected middle news anchor with a sidekick Madeline and newspaper editor wife Sheila, when he makes an ill-advised joke at a wedding and is faced with cancel culture (ThreeNow).    Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story  Based on the shocking true story of model Chloe Ayling, who was lured to a fake photoshoot and abducted by human traffickers - then found herself at the centre of a media storm, accused of staging the whole thing as a publicity stunt (TVNZ+).    Wheel Blacks: Bodies on the Line   This three-part docuseries follows New Zealand's wheelchair rugby team in their bid to qualify for the Paris Paralympics. Despite having to rely on fundraising, charity, and volunteers, these Kiwi underdogs are determined to rise to the challenge (Neon).    LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line Midnight Oil is not your typical band, so it makes sense that this is not your typical rockumentary. Sex and drugs play little if any part in the tale of one of Australia’s most successful rock groups ever. Neither will you find the kind of rivalries and tensions that one expects in the story of a band with a career as long as this one.  Told in voiceovers by managers, critics, commentators, and the band members themselves, the film features plenty of footage of the Oils performing live, from their earliest days. Watching Garrett command the stage, it is clear why they made it as big as they did, even while they resisted crucial aspects of the pop game, such as appearing on Countdown, the most popular music programme in Australian TV history.    The Instigators  Rory and Cobby are unlikely partners thrown together for a heist. However, when it goes awry, they team up to outrun police, backward bureaucrats, and a vengeful crime boss (Apple TV+).    LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.co

Pulses and legumes. They’re filling, nourishing, super versatile and cheap and yet many of us would be lucky to eat them more than once or twice a month. Would it encourage you if I told you they’re necessary, yes necessary, for a balanced diet?  This one-pot dish is tasty and wonderfully easy to throw together.  Serves 4  Ingredients  1 400g tin lentils, drained  2 tbsps olive oil  4-6 pieces chicken, skin on, bone in  1 onion, diced  1 carrot, peeled and diced  Few sprigs of rosemary  1 cup vegetable to chicken stock (can use water)  2 tbsps pomegranate molasses  Salt and pepper to season  Small handful parsley to garnish    Method  1. Heat oil in rinsed saucepan and brown chicken. 2. Add onion, carrots and rosemary and sauté for 2-3 minutes. 3. Pour in stock and pomegranate molasses, cover and simmer for 25 minutes or until chicken is cooked through. 4. Add in lentils and simmer with lid off for 5-10 minutes. Taste and season with salt and pepper.  5. Garnish with parsley and serve with salad.    Make i

Of all the global stars to rise from this year’s Olympic Games —Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, Dame Lisa Carrington— 36-year-old Macquarie University lecturer Rachael Gunn is perhaps the unlikeliest.   Raygun, as per her stage name, is a true icon of these times. Not because she competed in the most modern of Olympic sports —breaking— but because through the power of the internet, her efforts have become arguably the most recognisable of the entire Olympic Games.   If you haven’t seen Raygun’s performance, I don’t know where you’ve been. All I know is you don’t have social media, because the flood of clips and memes celebrating, remixing, and/or mocking her dancing has completely inundated every bite of every feed of every platform.   When most of us think of breakdancing, we think of incredibly athletic people spinning and twisting. We think of spinning headstands, headslides, one-handed body freezes.  Really good breaking is just gymnastics to hip hop.  Raygun didn’t do that stuff. She openly admits she can’t

Kevin Milne, like everyone, watched the Olympics. He loved the Olympics, but couldn’t help but notice the disappointment, tears, and heartbreak of many competitors. And it left him with a question: is high-level competitive sport worth it?  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tom Sainsbury wears many hats - actor, writer, comedian, director, host, influencer - across film, tv, stage, and social media here in New Zealand and on international projects.  Kiwis might know him for his political impersonations or shows like Wellington Paranormal.  Tom is hosting a winter special of New Zealand’s International Comedy Festival, and having just returned from a very glamorous international sojourn, he joined Jack Tame in studio for a chat.   LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For the second time in a row, Tones and I’s recently released album ‘Beautifully Ordinary’ opens at No. 1 on Australia’s album chart.  The album is the follow-up to ‘Welcome To The Madhouse’, which debuted in 2021.   Estelle Clifford joined Jack Tame to give her thoughts on the album.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.