Afternoons for Tuesday 3 June 2025

 

1:10 How New Zealand schools can respond better to lockdowns

School lockdowns in New Zealand feel like they're much more common these days.

So, in events like these, or when there's a natural emergency - how can schools communicate quickly with parents and the wider school community?

Sharlene Barnes created a free app called Skool Loop, which more than 1300 kiwi schools already use.

She says what was once considered an extraordinary emergency is now a regular occurrence and hopes more schools will take advantage of what the free app offers.

1:20 Department of Conservation's unsung hero

DOC ranger is an unsung hero whose job is to clean public toilets at Canterbury's DOC sites and provide toilet paper.

And replacing the loo paper is a mammoth job nationwide, with DOC revealing around 15,000 kilometres per year of paper was ordered over the last year - that's long enough to stretch the length of the country nearly ten times.

Ranger Daryl Sweeney answers other people's calls of nature, but he thinks it's about time people answered their own.

1:35 Why it's getting harder to uncover new local musical artists

Over the last two decades the number of places we could - in theory - be exposed to new music has increased exponentially.  

But instead of making it easier to discover New Zealand artists, it seems to be getting harder.

Composer, producer, and lecturer at Massey University School of music Jesse Austin-Steward spoke to Jesse.

1:45 Tech Tuesday

Daniel Watson, managing director for Vertech.co.nz joined Jesse to discuss the latest tech news.

2:10 Book Critic

Anna Rankin reviews Nadine Hura's Slowing the Sun and Forrest Gander's Mojave Ghost.

2:20 Update on Oz with Brad Foster

Our Australian correspondent Brad Foster gave us an update on the Death cap mushroom murder trial & discussed the new research on the growth of bowel cancer in younger people in Australia.

2:30 Music feature: Stories from the road

Jesse spoke to Dustin Watts about his life on the road working security with the likes of Taylor Swift, and Metallica.

3:10 Feature interview: Dame Jacinda Ardern

Former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern rose to global prominence as a leader who spoke the language of empathy in a world increasingly fluent in outrage.  She won admiration as only the second woman in history to have a baby while leading a government and for her response to the Christchurch Mosque attacks.  But she also faced criticism over the COVID lockdowns and unmet promises on progressive reforms.

She joined Jesse for a rare interview on Afternoons.

3:30 Spoken Feature: Surfing the biggest waves in the world

In 2011 American surfer McNamara surfed the world's biggest wave at Nazaré on the Portuguese coast.

3:45 The pre-Panel

Wallace Chapman and producer Jose Barbosa to preview tonight's instalment of The Panel.