Best Of The Week

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 24 June. This week..... a leading campaigner for voluntary euthanasia shares his story of how watching his father die led him to his views, the campaign to boost the number of refugees to this country, the clean up of thousands of toxic waste sites is dropped as a priority by the government, plans by Sky TV to merge with giant telco Vodafone, media Entrepreneur and founder of the Huffington Post on the value of a good...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 17 June. This week..... John Key's recent visit to Fiji draws attention to the fact some journalists are not welcome there, a new auto race is underway: to build cleaner, cheaper and even self driving cars, a navigation game thats helping with dementia research, how New Zealand businesswoman and philanthropist Katherine Corich became a global entrepreneur , we hear from the founder of the iconic music label flying Nun,...

This week...Media theorist, professor, from Queens Birthday graphic novelist Douglas Rushkoff on how the digital economy failed to live up to its promise and how we could still fix it, an economics scholar weighs in on the housing crisis on Nights, Sunday morning tackles the pros and cons of tobacco taxes, Insight looks at the future of work, a new chapter has been added to the story of the 2003 discovery in Indonesia of the diminutive hominin species Homo floresiensis, Nine to Noon looks...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 27 May. This week... two high profile journalism leaders announce they're going into business together, we hear from the author of 'Lemmy The Definitive Biography' about Motorhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister, three new names in New Zealand music to watch out for, the science of the movie Interstellar, what to do with 800 million dollars worth of good food that goes to waste in New Zealand each year, we hear from a leader in...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 27 May. This week.....the life of the working poor in the United States, the media are now reaping the benefit of people revealing all on social media, growing tensions in the road versus rail debate in Northland, what its like working for five winters in Antarctica, how space weather affects earth, we join a farrier at work, an interview with one of the most successful jazz pianists in the world ahead of his first show...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 20 May. This week.....where you live in this country could be critical to your chances of getting skin cancer and surviving it, a moving interview with an author who'se written her last book while dying of melanoma-related brain cancer, are employers doing enough to embrace a workforce thats getting dramatically older, a damning report on decades of under reporting on fish catches in our waters, the Panama Papers back in...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 6 May. This week... Kim Hill with a British novelist who's latest book is a "cover version" of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Mark Weldon's departure from Mediaworks dissected, a Princeton-based NZ composer talks about sexism in the industry, Ghanaian hip-hop, and her newfound love of the mbira, the revival of taonga puoro or traditional Maori musical instruments, what can be done to get New Zealand businesses a better...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 6 May. This week.....Scholar, activist and political theorist Noam Chomsky talks about politics, society and the death of the American dream, can the experimental new funding model social bonds help New Zealand's most vulnerable? Mixed messages and home truths in the media on soaring house prices, the global effects of the world's increasing population, the French doctor instrumental in founding Doctors without Borders...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 15 April. This week.....it was the biggest ever leak of newsworthy information and the biggest collaboration between media organisations - but the New Zealand media were out of the loop on the publication of the Panama Papers, a former Waikato dairy farmer who operates the biggest legal cannabis operation in the US, is surgery the ultimate placebo? A young Muslim black woman is representing New Zealand at a commonwealth...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 8 March. This week....New Zealand's role in helping the rich and powerful hide their wealth, how do journalism and public relations co-exist, Apple vs the FBI - and the war over encryption, broadcaster Niva Retimanu on her transformation from an overweight, drinking, smoking and junk food consumer to a marathon runner, we go out on Akaroa Harbour to research Hector's Dolphins - the world's smallest and rarest, musician...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 1 April, this week.. the war on drugs is deemed a failure, how can media respond in ways that doesn't give the perpetrators of terrorist acts the publicity they want? a vet who's pretty quick with the snip, portraying aviatrix Jean Batten on stage, a man described as a Pakeha priest among Maori who is about to celebrate 50 years in the priesthood, what is adblocking all about? a book about women of the Catlins, celebrated...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 25 March. This week.... An RNZ Insight Investigation uncovers evidence the Transport Accident Investigation Commission has been underfunded for more than a decade, the fight for justice for convicted murderer Teina Pora by a former policeman turned private investigator, the fuss over our 5 dollar note finding favour overseas wasn't quite what it seemed in the media, a highly acclaimed book by a doctor confronting his own...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 18th March, this week... playwright and screen writer Anthony McCarten, a chat about Tiny Ruins' latest EP 'Hurtling Through', how do our brain cells send signals to each other and can they talk back? a Nobel Peace Prize winner who ultimately saw his country become an independent nation, the management type 2 diabetes through diet and not drugs, should Iwi have to be consulted about where the ashes of the dead are...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 11th March. This week.... the minimum wage - how high is too high, critics of the TPP want more transparency when free trade talks start with the European Union, how the principal of Naenae College transformed the troubled school and its pupils, the debate over electric cars, the business practices of successful drug lords, the implications of a new scientific technique to edit DNA, why certain types of fungi are being...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 4th March. This week....criticism of the level of Maori content on RNZ National, tributes for cricketing great Martin Crowe who died this week, using conscious movement to bypass Parkinson's tremors, exposing poaching kingpins in Africa, a project to educate young people about human trafficking/slavery , a six month swim to become the first person to swim across the Pacific, the Lake Ohau Climate History project,...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 26 February. This week..... the war on drugs, we hear from the chair of a West Yorkshire voluntary gardening initiative called Incredible Edible, in the online era does putting the word 'naked' or 'nude' in a headline prompt people to click on an online story and are those stories actually newsworthy? the politics of US Senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, what are robopets? we'll heqar about a show described...

This week..... Just how does newspaper coverage of politicians affect the way we think about them? a look at the impact of US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spending and tax proposals on the American economy, it's been held up for decades as a story of ecocide, so what really happened on Easter Island? why do we sigh 12 times per hour on average? making a living as a news photographer is tougher than ever, we hear from one of the lucky ones, feminist blogger Deborah Russell on...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 19February.This week..... Just how does newspaper coverage of politicians affect the way we think about them? a look at the impact of US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spending and tax proposals on the American economy, it's been held up for decades as a story of ecocide, so what really happened on Easter Island? why do we sigh 12 times per hour on average? making a living as a news photographer is tougher than...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 12 February. This week.... False confessions and coerced testimony feature in the documentary series Making a Murderer, should the annual political ritual at Ti Tii Marae continue on Waitangi Day, the plight of homeless families in Auckland, a crisis shortage of maths and science teachers , a former M15 intelligence officer who revealed incompetencies and crimes within the spy agency, a social media storm is sometimes...

Highlights from RNZ National's programmes for the week ending Friday 5 January. This week.... frustration the rebuild of Christchurch city is still only halfway completed five years on, we take a look at TV3's newly launched Newshub at 6, outspoken UK politician Austin Mitchell on whats become of our Pavlova Paradise, a cognitive psychologist on thinking straight in an age of information overload, the virtual reality of living with dementia to improve patient care, a victims advocate who...