At Large with Toby Manhire Archiv
81 Episoden
51 Minuten
After more than 80 columns, Hera’s advice spanned the spectrum of human troubles. For our second live event, we revisited four problems from the archives, talked about Hera’s response, and heard updates from the callers themselves. Note: the callers emailed in their updates so the voices you hear won’t be their actual voices. Instead you’ll hear some of the greatest voice talent that works in the Spinoff offices. Recorded in September 2024. Help Me Hera: Men I haven’t seen in years keep crawling out of the woodwork Help Me Hera: My friend dumped me and I don’t know why Help Me Hera: I need my partner to eat some goddamn veges Help Me Hera: How do I stop being the nosiest person alive? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
24 Minuten
Senior writer Alex Casey has a long history with cinema, both as a reviewer and as a former projectionist. This week she wrote two film-adjacent features. The first had Alex travel to Akaroa to speak to the people running a bustling local cinema and then go down a rabbit hole of South Island cinemas holding on to the movies as a third space. And the second is just a fun appreciation of our strangely high proportion of successful child actors, and what makes it possible to succeed here at 11 years old. She appeared on Behind the Story to talk local reporting, the magic of movies and the very best of our child actors. The small town cinemas holding on at the edge of the world How does New Zealand produce so many successful child actors? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
45 Minuten
Zeni Gibson has been stalked and gruesomely harassed for nearly nine years by a man she rejected when she was 17. This is her story. Content warning: this story contains graphic descriptions of threatened violence, including sexual violence. Please take care. As told to Madeleine Holden. Read by Anna Rawhiti-Connell. Made with support from The Spinoff Members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
60 Minuten
As homelessness hits an all-time high, New Zealand’s frontline organisations are embracing unconventional and innovative strategies. Joel MacManus takes a closer look at the crisis and meets the people who claim to have the cure. Story by Joel MacManus. Read by Te Aihe Butler. Made with support from The Spinoff Members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
25 Minuten
Every other week we read reports of the rising rates of homelessness in our major cities. These stories are sometimes about homelessness itself and other times about the siblings of homelessness, like crime and welfare. Wellington editor Joel MacManus spent months speaking to those on the frontline in the fight to solve homelessness once and for all. It’s a long read, so for the first time ever we’ve made Cover Stories available in audio form. If you’d rather hear the story than read it, Te Aihe Butler has voiced Joel’s story and you can find it right here in the Behind The Story feed. Joel’s reporting covers the causes, the implications and the potential solution for homelessness in New Zealand. A comprehensive assessment of where we are at as a country in caring for our most vulnerable, and far we still have to go. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 Stunde 13 Minuten
Last week, The Spinoff unveiled its top 100 New Zealand TV shows of the 21st century, sparking plenty of debate about what truly deserved the top spot. This week, The Spinoff senior writer and Top 100 listmaster Alex Casey is joined by a panel of TV fanatics – Kura Forrester, Rhiannon McCall, Stewart Sowman-Lund and Lyric Waiwiri-Smith – for a special Behind The Story recorded live event at Q Theatre in Auckland. Together, they'll unearth some beloved TV gems and make their cases for their all-time favourite local TV show, with the live audience helping choose a new winner. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
28 Minuten
Senior writer Alex Casey spent the past couple of months deep in local television, leading one of our most ambitious projects to date: The Spinoff top 100 NZ TV shows of the 21st century. Every day this week we have counted down 20 shows, each given its time in the sun as a crucial piece in our cultural puzzle. On Friday, we released the final 20, crowning a winner and drawing to a close more than 30,000 words published on New Zealand Television in one week. Alex joins Madeleine Chapman to discuss the complex process of judging local television, the surprise hits and the value in looking back at what we’ve produced as a country. The Spinoff top 100 NZ TV shows 100-81 80-61 60-41 40-21 20-1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
18 Minuten
Bulletin editor Stewart Sowman-Lund has had a few roles in his time at the Spinoff, first as live updates editor, then reporter, and now as bulletin editor. Writing a bulletin every morning takes up plenty of his time, but he also specialises in following those random, one-off tips that every journalist gets. This week’s tip was from a man who had strangely been called by the police while driving, to tell him to stop using his phone while driving. ‘It was quite baffling’: Police call driver on motorway to say ‘stop using your phone’ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
56 Minuten
This week 10 years ago, a website was launched. It was a TV blog, dedicated to the most prestige and the most comforting of shows, and it had two writers on staff, founder Duncan Greive and film critic Alex Casey. The first article ever published by thespinoff.co.nz was about the return of Full House. Today, that website has an editorial team of 20, with writers and editors in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. We have podcasts, like this one, video series and live events. The Spinoff 10 years on looks very different to the little TV blog that launched in September 2014. But some names persist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
54 Minuten
After more than 80 columns, Hera’s advice spans the spectrum of human troubles. For our live event, we revisited three problems from the archives, talked about Hera’s response, and heard updates from the callers themselves. Note: the callers emailed in their updates so the voices you hear won’t be their actual voices. Instead you’ll hear some of the greatest voice talent that works in the Spinoff offices. To find out more about The Spinoff's series of live events visit https://thespinoff.co.nz/events Help Me Hera: An acquaintance is in love with me and it’s making me uncomfortable Help Me Hera: I’m trans and my mum is a Posie Parker superfan Help Me Hera: I’m desperate to have kids but my partner is stalling Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
18 Minuten
Documentary maker Julie Zhu is the director of Takeout Kids, an observational series following five children as they work and grow up in their parents’ shops. The series is beautiful, both in the stories it tells but also literally, with a focus on scene-setting and stunning cinematography. Julie joins Madeleine Chapman this week to talk about how she finds the short stories within hours and hours of footage, and the special considerations required when filming with young people. Takeout Kids season two trailer The Ground We Won trailer Takeout Kids season one Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
17 Minuten
Senior writer Alex Casey has this week written an incredible longform feature about the rising trend of young children coveting skincare. Note: this is not about makeup or wearing your mum’s lipstick. It’s about 10 year olds using serums and anti-wrinkle creams. Alex has been thinking, writing about and living the beauty industry for years, and this is likely just the first in a series of big features about a billion-dollar industry with controversial aims. She joins Madeleine Chapman this week to talk about the unique challenges of interviewing kids and her own spotty history with skincare and beauty. ‘It’s insidious and dangerous’: The kids fighting wrinkles before their 10th birthday Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
19 Minuten
Hera Lindsay Bird has been writing the extremely popular Help Me Hera advice column for over a year now, offering incisive, funny and wise guidance to New Zealand’s biggest and smallest problems. And soon, you’ll be able to hear her talk about that advice at some Spinoff live events. Hera joins Madeleine Chapman this week as she’s also an Olympics obsessive and has written about the games, specifically which events should be culled and which should be added. It’s surprisingly reasoned and justified for such a hot take. Help Me Hera Ten sports we should cut from the Olympic programme (and what could replace them) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
20 Minuten
Gabi Lardies wrote this week's Cover Story about the rise of home surveillance cameras. It’s a big piece of work that started as a simple observation of something she had seen in local Facebook groups. The feature unpicks aspects of human behaviour, crime and mass survellieance and it asks a big question about the trade-offs we make when embracing ubiquitous, convenient and cheap technology solutions to perceived problems. Gabi joins Anna Rawhiti-Connell to discuss her observational instinct as a journalist, how she substantiates those observations, and how she balances empathetic and human storytelling with very big and often morally questionable forces on a topic like this. Stories discussed: Selling security, delivering anxiety: The rise of home surveillance cameras Yes, those are testicles hanging from my car Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
20 Minuten
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith started at The Spinoff as a staff writer two weeks ago and has three stories under her belt already. Her story this week, "Remembering Suzanne Paul’s ‘cursed’ Māori Village", marked twenty years since Paul closed the doors on her Māori cultural theme park on Auckland’s North Shore. Lyric was three years old when it all went down, so used records of journalism past to piece together a current-day view of a really weird moment in our pop culture history and a venture described as “the most significant event in Paul’s demise”. Lyric joins Anna Rawhiti-Connell on Behind the Story to discuss whether the internet truly never forgets, celebrity profile writing, her love of pop culture, and live blogging while trying to buy tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras concert. Read the story: Remembering Suzanne Paul’s ‘cursed’ Māori Village Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
At Large with Toby Manhire
Diving into a story of the moment bringing with Spinoff writers, experts and newsmakers, to help make sense of the headline onslaught.