Afternoons

Each week we take a situation and get your take on how it can be resolved - this week we're looking at whether children should pay rent if they are living at home as adults. Let us know your thoughts on 2101 or [email protected]

There is a lot going on in the world of tech, and not much of it good, our technology expert Tim Batt is here with the latest on leading AI company Anthropic's new AI tool that is apparently too dangerous to release.

Afternoons book critic Anna Rankin joins me to share what she's been reading. Transcription, by Ben Lerner Childish Palate, by Shariff Burke, a debut short story collection from Tender Press, a New Zealand independent press.

It's time for Mayoral minutes - where we speak with a local mayor about the challenges they're facing - how they're working to solve them, and what makes their community special. Today we're heading to the Thames-Coromandel District from where Peter Revell joins Jesse.

David Lomas has been reuniting Kiwis with their loved ones for years - and now he's back with a brand new series. Debuting tonight, David Lomas Breakthrough, sees him tackle those impossible cases, where a search has seemingly hit a dead end.

People are having less sex. It's a trend across much of the modern world. Intimacy and desire are shifting, especially among younger generations, for reasons that go far beyond morality or busy schedules. Dr Debra Soh is a writer and a neuroscientist who specializes in human sexuality. She investigates what's behind this quiet sexual recession, from technology and porn to mental health, hormones, and cultural anxiety and what it could mean for the future of human connection. Her new book is called, Sextinction: The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy. Here is a link to her book. Here is a link to the study she mentioned.

When Coromandel teenager Roman Carley was doing beach clean-up, he noticed there was a type of rubbish that kept appearing. Plastic ice bags. So, he decided to take action, Roman Carley joins Jesse to tell us all about it.

The US began a blockade of all ships entering and exiting Iranian ports this morning - warning that all vessels - regardless of flag could be intercepted or captured Traffic through the Strait has come to a near standstill, analysts estimate that around 800 ships have been stuck in the Gulf since the war began To explain the blockade, Jesse is joined by Jennifer Parker, Jen is a naval expert who served 20 years with the Royal Australian Navy. Her last appointment was as Director of Operations in Bahrain of the Combined Maritime Forces, a 47-nation coalition promoting maritime security in the Middle East and Indian Ocean region

Christopher Beha didn't lose his faith because a prayer went unanswered. He lost the Catholic faith he practiced his whole life because a prayer was answered. After his twin brother survived a devastating traffic accident, Beha found himself shaken not into belief, but out of it. The former Harper's magazine editor expected atheism to bring clarity, but instead it left him facing the same brutal questions, why suffering exists, what meaning looks like, but now without God. Beha traces his return to Catholicism not as a comforting certainty, but as a way of living with doubt, mystery, and moral responsibility in his new book, Why I Am Not an Atheist: The Confessions of a Skeptical Believer.

Afternoons TV Critic and actor Claire Chitham shares what she's been watching: DTF St Louis