Are you smarter than a 10-year-old?
Our writer takes on the challenge
Kia ora and welcome to The Weekend! I have a podcast I love that I don’t tell any one else about. It’s nothing illicit or weird; just something I stumbled across in the wide expanse of the internet, with a host I’m fond of, and now I’ve spent so many hours listening to his voice. It’s a private pleasure, I guess, and it falls into the category of what Sam Brooks calls a “little story” — a piece of media that’s just for you, not for discussion, not a product of “the zeitgeist”. Sam is willing to name several of his little stories, but I shan’t. Luckily for all of you, I don’t gatekeep most of my media consumption so please read on for lots of good links from The Spinoff and around the internet.
-Shanti Mathias, staff writer
Alex Casey vs. Brain Busters
Senior writer Alex Casey went to visit the set of Brain Busters, Aotearoa’s longest-running kids’ quiz show, last month. Here’s what she told me about it: “I was blessed, honoured and humbled to be invited to compete on Brain Busters. First, I got a behind-the-scenes tour of the elaborate quiz show machine – they see 20 kids a day arriving to shoot around 45 episodes in just three weeks. There's an adjudication room, quiz cards in locked boxes, and a panel of teachers to ensure the questions align with the curriculum. But the pièce de résistance of the visit was my chance to partake in a quick-fire quiz round, and later an obstacle course, against a couple of 12-year-olds. As someone whose sole contribution to pub quizzes is muttering "Ava Max" or "‘Whatever You Like’ by T.I.", I was politely destroyed, and my brain firmly busted. Thankfully, they filmed the whole thing.”
Our food systems need more transparency
Why is it so hard to tell where your food comes from? As someone of occasional-panic-about-kai-resilience experience (I’ve been permanently scarred by dystopic fiction), I appreciated this extract from a book about Aotearoa’s food systems which I now desperately want to read in full. Author Emily King writes: “The food chain is now so complicated, and the ingredients so mixed, with food makers not following their supply chain closely enough, that it’s almost impossible to tell where our food comes from.” She offers a guide to understanding food labelling: what does “made from local and imported ingredients” really indicate? How hard is it to get “grown in New Zealand” stamped on the packaging of your product? And who profits from this complicated system?
Number of the week: 98 days to go until the election
There are 98 days until the election. Where’s it all at? Toby Manhire gathers some graphs to look at which party has the most money, how close the polls are at the moment and what the key dates coming up are. Here are some interesting numbers from the story, in case you’re wondering why you’re seeing a lot of politicians out and about and not so much lawmaking. Act has raised more than $1.3m of large donations (more than $20k). 40% of people in a representative poll said that the cost of living was their biggest concern. Parliament adjourns on August 31. And at the moment, averaged polls show 34.6% of the vote going to National, 34.1% to Labour, 12.1% to Act, 8.3% to the Greens and 3.9% to Te Pāti Māori.
Chris Hipkins’ Kiri Allan conundrum as tackled by Gone by Lunchtime
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‘I had a relationship with my teacher. It’s more common than you’d think’
With a teacher’s inappropriate relationship with a student in the news this week (read Helena Dray’s powerful statement here), a writer with the pen name JP Stanley writes for The Spinoff about her relationship with a teacher a generation earlier. “He told me I was special, unique, different from all of the others,” she writes. “I was determined, I thought I knew what I wanted, and I was completely infatuated. I was also very, very wrong….As a teacher, I have a different perspective on these experiences. I have been beyond careful to ensure I never placed myself in similar situations, yet I see how they can happen all too easily. High school is a time of growth, of secrecy, and of finding out where the boundaries lie. There is a desire to experience life, to skip the painful process of discovery, to be in a ‘real’ relationship.”
A day in the life of a creative writing student
What does a full-time poet really do? Jordan Hamel, currently completing a Master of Fine Arts in the United States, offers The Spinoff an exclusive glimpse into his daily routine. Is his life more like The Hunger Games or The Breakfast Club? How much melatonin does he take? What’s the cure for loneliness? Why is it so stressful to get up day after day and have your poems critiqued in front of your peers? Is American coffee redeemable? Will Hamel have a job in the post-revolution society? And can he get through a piece of writing without despairing about the near-impossibility of a financially stable career in the arts?
Everything else!
Extremely great longread about the man who wants to make condoms sexy
If you’re feeling worried about diet beverages being possibly carcinogenic, maybe read this
Why does the media play down the meat industry’s connection to climate change?
Standardised tests are bad for children. Do we really want them here?
All the parts of me that overthink loved this webcomic about the origin of consciousness
The dire state of Auckland’s teacher shortage
Someone call the police! I mean, call the plumbers!
Nigel Latta has been investigating scamming. Does his new show have too many magicians?
Beautiful long-read about the urgent need for protecting the ocean in New Zealand — plus, a podcast explaining how the Kermadec sanctuary went wrong
A moving piece about archiving the digital life of a parent you didn’t fully know
I loved this profile of Ryan Gosling!
Existential threat corner: this week had the day with the hottest average temperature ever recorded. Then it had another.
Any time I get to feel good about knowing what pinniped means is a good day (because it also involves thinking about pinnipeds and their seal silly season)
Endangered Species is a lighthearted look at species under threat
Movies and advertisements are getting harder to tell apart. That’s a problem.
What’s going on with Threads, the new Twitter competitor from Meta?
A collection of some of the funniest insults from parliamentary history
