Nights for Thursday 30 October 2025
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Why do we love horror movies?
9:25 PM.Mathias Clasen, associate professor and director of the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark is a horror researcher., and he joins Emile Donovan. Read more Audio
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What was behind the global Microsoft outage?
8:45 PM.Dev Singh from the University of Auckland's Electrical, Computer and Software Engineering school.joins Emile Donovan to explain. Read more Audio
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Why Fonterra farmers voted to sell consumer business to French dairy giant
8:35 PM.Julia Jones is an independent advisor in ag industry and joins Emile Donovan. Read more Audio
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Inside the world of competitive pumpkin growing
8:20 PM.Sam Elton-Walters from Giant Pumpkins NZ joins Emile Donovan. Read more Audio
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The significance of the PM's meeting with Donald Trump
8:10 PM.Sam Sachdeva is the national affairs editor at Newsroom dot co dot nz and is on the ground in Korea. Read more Audio
8:10 The significance of the PM's meeting with Donald Trump
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon met US President Donald Trump for the very first time this week at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit, APEC, in Korea.
Sam Sachdeva is the national affairs editor at Newsroom dot co dot nz and is on the ground in Korea.
He joins Emile Donovan.
The Prime Minister has met with US President Donald Trump, ahead of a leaders meeting at APEC hosted by the South Korean President. Photo: Pool / Jamie Ensor
8:20 Inside the world of competitive pumpkin growing
What's orange and weighs 1278 kilos? The answer? The world's biggest pumpkin!
The record was set this year in the UK.
Here at home, for Southern Hemisphere growers, the start of the giant pumpkin growing season is just around the
Giant pumpkin fanatic, Sam Elton-Walters from Giant Pumpkins NZ joins Emile Donovan.
The Great Pumpkin Carnival 2021 in Hamilton Photo: Giant Pumpkins NZ
8:40 Why Fonterra farmers voted to sell consumer business to French dairy giant
The sale of iconic brands like Mainland and Anchor to a French company.has today been given the green light from Fonterra's farmer shareholders
More than 88 percent of the votes cast at a special meeting backed the $4.2 billion sale to French dairy giant Lactalis.
The threshold required to approve the sale was more than 50 percent.
However not everyone is happy about the deal.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters described the decision as "utter madness" and "economic self-sabotage".
Julia Jones is an independent advisor in ag industry and joins Emile Donovan.
Photo: 123rf / Supplied images
8:45 What was behind the global Microsoft outage?
If you were trying to log in to your bank account or check in for a flight today, you might have found yourself locked out and unable to access those services online.
That was because of a problem with Microsoft Azure, the company's cloud system.
A huge number of services depend on cloud computing, and organisations like Fire and Emergency, Health NZ, and Immigration NZ also reported issues.
Just last week, Amazon's cloud services went down, disrupting websites around the world.
So how vulnerable are we to outages like this as more and more of the internet depends on just a handful of companies?
To help explain what's going on I'm joined now by Dev Singh from the University of Auckland's Electrical, Computer and Software Engineering school.
Photo: CHRISTOPH HARDT/GEISLER-FOTOPRES
9:05 Nights Quiz
Do you know your stuff? Come on the air and be grilled by Emile Donovan as he dons his quizmaster hat.
If you get an answer right, you move on to the next question. If you get it wrong, your time in the chair is up, and the next caller will be put through. The person with the most correct answers at the end of the run goes in the draw for a weekly prize.
9:25 Why do we love horror movies?
It's that time of year when everyone's thinking about all things spooky and frightening.
So why do we deliberately scare ourselves? Horror movies, novels and televisions shows have never been more popular
What is it about horror and thrills that keeps drawing us back? Because most of the time we're trying to avoid fear.
Mathias Clasen, associate professor and director of the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark is a horror researcher.
He's also written two books, Why Horror Seduces and A Very Nervous Person's Guide to Horror Movies.
He joins Emile Donovan.
Twin actors in the horror movies the Shining. Photo: Youtube
9:45 Pacific Waves
A daily current affairs programme that delves deeper into the major stories of the week, through a Pacific lens, and shines a light on issues affecting Pacific people wherever they are in the world. Hosted by Susana Suisuiki.
10:17 The Detail
This evening on The Detail - The aged care sector has had enough of reports describing all its many problems - and hopes a new Ministerial Advisory Group will provide some solutions.
Photo: RNZ
10:45 The Reading: ' The Dwarf Who Moved' Episode 7
We have the penultimate episode from our autobiographical series - ' The Dwarf Who Moved' written and told by Sir Peter Williams QC.
And tonight, his themes are the inhumanity of much of prison life and the tragic case of William Annear.
11:07 The Mixtape
Shakaiah Perez aka Lady Shaka is a DJ known for her eclectic sets that reflect her mixed Māori, Tahitian, Cape Verdean, Tokelauan, and Samoan heritage.
In 2023, she was awarded the Creative New Zealand Award for her ground-breaking work in shaping contemporary music that transcends traditional genres within the Pacific Islander community.
She joins Maggie Tweedie to share some songs on The Mixtape.
Lady Shaka Photo:
