Afternoons

Wallace Chapman and Jesse Mulligan star in the shortest show on radio, where they show they really can make something out of nothing, join them to be part of their delight, or to simply despair. Wallace will also preview what's on The Panel tonight.

Each Tuesday here on Afternoons we play You're the Judge where you, our audience, get to chime into someone else's dilemma. This week Billy wants our advice on what to do if he and his new girlfriend are politically opposed - he votes NZ First and she is Greens voter! Send us your thoughts on 2101 or email [email protected]

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If you had one last meal, what would you choose? This is a question that begins every episode of a podcast called Last Meal with Tom Nash. But food is just the entree into much bigger conversations. Tom Nash has a life story that feeds the idea that the hardest moments in our lives can sometimes become our greatest source of strength. As a teenager in Sydney, he contracted meningococcal septicemia and was given little chance of surviving. He did but lost all four limbs. He eventually learned to walk with prosthetic legs and chose metal hook prostheses for his arms. Now he's a speaker and an advocate for antifragility who believes adversity isn't necessarily trying to teach us a lesson. Sometimes life simply serves you something you didn't ask for, and you have to take it as it comes. Click here to learn more about Tom's podcast.

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A good podcast is like good radio, you can't stop listening, but with so many podcasts on offer it's hard to know what to commit to - fortunately our podcast critic Ximena Smith is here to help. She shares her thoughts on The Poisoned Wife and Black Box: The Chatbots.

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This week Afternoon's book critic Lisa Glass looks into the theme of invisible women via these books: Sophie, Standing There - Meg Mason Boring Asian Female - Canwen Xu People Hacker - Confessions of a Burglar for Hire - Jenny Radcliffe

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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 Masterton ... that's in the Wairarapa District in the southeast of the North Island and that's where Mayor Bex Johnson is when she chats to Jesse.

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Multiple sclerosis, also known as MS, is a life long neurological condition that affects five thousand New Zealanders. Symptoms often start for people between the ages of 20 to 50, but being such a complex condition, how it presents is also complicated .. with no two people experiencing MS in the same way. Which also means it can take time to be diagnosed with MS .. some people waiting up to ten years for an official diagnosis after symptoms start. Jesse talks to Shania Mathers about her story getting a MS diagnosis, but first MSNZ General Manager Amanda Rose joins Jesse to discuss why more needs to be done.

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To help build a picture of what regenerative farming practices might look like here in New Zealand, Te Whare Wanaka o Aoraki Lincoln University PhD student Kaitlin Watson compared a regenerative pasture-based system with a conventional one. She chats to Jesse about what she discovered.

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We're going to start today's show by talking about political polls and whether they're reliable. This election is looking really close - and polls are consistently showing both National and Labour below the 30 percent mark. That means polls could take on an added importance .. helping shape narratives .. but how do we know we can trust them? Our next guest has concerns about who gets polled, how the numbers are calculated and who pays for the research. Ben Gray is an Associate Professor at University of Otago - for the past twenty years he has convened a course that covers appraisal of evidence, research ethics, cultural competence and health law.

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Wallace Chapman and Jesse Mulligan star in the shortest show on radio, where they show they really can make something out of nothing, join them to be part of their delight, or to simply despair. Wallace will also preview what's on The Panel tonight.