Afternoons

Women in Film and Television New Zealand - also known as WIFT- is a not-for-profit organisation that now has over 1300 members. Its purpose is to celebrate and support women working in film and television in New Zealand. Tonight the WIFT NZ Awards are taking place, here to talk us through the finalists is the chair of the judging panel Jill McNab.

With no end in sight for the Middle East conflict, more and more conversations are turning to oil supplies. While our leaders have been quick to reassure New Zealanders that there is no need to worry about supplies running out, surely it would be prudent to consider what steps can be taken should we need to? As many of you will remember carless days were in a thing in the late 1970s but what else can we do to make sure we keep the country running? Dr Matt Boyd is an independent researcher in global catastrophic risk and one of the brains behind the Aotearoa New Zealand Catastrophe Resilience Project.

Dopamine is known as the brain's "happiness chemical". It's what we blame when we eat a whole bag of chips, a block of chocolate or doomscroll on social media, but that's not quite right

This week author Josie Shapiro joins Jesse. Her bestselling and much-loved debut novel 'Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts' won the inaugural Allen & Unwin Commercial Fiction Prize, she followed it up with her novel 'Good Things Come and Go' last November which has had fans and critics raving. Josie will be taking part in two events at the Auckland Writers Festival in May.

Kelly Gibney shares some Easy Eats with us, this week it is hoisin beef with broccoli sesame rice. Beef mince is a crowd-pleasing, economical protein and it becomes a very tasty and quick weeknight meal here.

Time for Heading Off, this is our chance to share in your travel adventures without leaving the house. Today we join Tess Woolcock on her trip to Mexico.

There's been plenty of commentary around a Bill that's before Parliament which seeks to make English an official language of New Zealand. It's part of a coalition deal with National and New Zealand First, putting English alongside Maori and Sign Language. That got us thinking about "official" languages and how they get such status, for more on this Dr Andreea Calude joins Jesse.

The programme for the 2026 Auckland Writers Festival Waituhi o Tamaki has just dropped, and it's looking to be a star-studded line-up for book lovers. The programme is compiled by artistic director Lyndsey Fineran, who joins Jesse.

You might recall that this time last year we spoke to someone from Wellington's South Coast whose house had been inundated by 100s of Portuguese millipedes; in the bathtub, climbing the walls, even in bed! To give us the latest we're joined by Victoria University pest control expert Professor Phil Lester.

How much petrol, diesel and jet fuel we have in the country depends on who you talk to it seems and whether it includes so called "stock on the water" which are supplies that have been shipped but haven't arrived yet. To try to answer that question Jesse is joined by Richard Edwards, a motoring journalist and managing editor of EVs & Beyond.