Nights

It's taken pride of place towering above Avondale's main street for more than 20 years. But it seems time is up for Dale the Avondale Spider, the Auckland suburb's beloved mascot. The five-metre-wide, eight-legged sculpture will have to be moved to make way for a new community centre and library. Where exactly Dale will go is still up in the air. I Love Avondale board chair Dayne Smith joins Mark Leishman to get a sense of what the sculpture means to people in the suburb and where the community would like it to go.

For the first time, Australia and New Zealand's food safety regulator has deemed that meat grown from quail cells is safe for humans to eat. Sydney company Vow has passed the first stage of assessment from Food Standards Australia New Zealand with its lab-grown or 'cell-cultivated' meat product, who said the food presented no health or nutrition risks. Only two countries in the world have approved lab-cultured meat for sale, Singapore and the United States, but it looks like Australasia could be next. Mark Leishman speaks to cultivated meat expert Olivia Ogilvie, a University of Canterbury biochemist and co-founder and CEO of Opo Bio, a company that develops animal cells for the cultivated meat industry.

Antarctica and cricket don't usually go hand in hand. But the two will come together at Christchurch's Hagley Oval this summer with a special brass bell from Canterbury Museum's collection signalling the start of international cricket matches. The historic bell is from the SY Morning steam yacht, which was used as a relief vessel on Scott's British National Antarctic Expedition between 1903 and 1904. The ringing of the bell five minutes before the start of play is inspired by a similar tradition at Lord's Cricket Ground in England, where a bell from a ship used in Robert Falcon Scott's first expedition to the Antarctic in the 1900s The curator of human history at Canterbury Museum Adele Jackson joins Mark Leishman to explain how the collaboration came together.

The stars of the New Zealand music scene are coming out next Wednesday night in a fundraising concert to save beloved student radio station 95bFM. Shihad, Marlon Williams, Voom, Tiny Ruins and more will be performing at Auckland Town Hall for 'Save the B'. Auckland's 95bFM has been a champion of alternative and independent music in Aotearoa since 1969, but the station says it has struggled to keep up with operating costs and with the nation switching more and more to digital media. All proceeds from Wednesday's concert will go to keeping the station up and running. Mark Leishman talks to 95bFM general manager Tom Tremewan.

Former Superintendent of the Mt John Observatory above Lake Tekapo in the Mackenzie Country, Alan Gilmore joins us for his regular astronomy chat. Tonight, he's talking about the meteor shower earlier this week (which may or may not have been a bit of a fizzer) as well as a recently-discovered six-planet system which has scientists scratching their heads.

The annual Meat the Need charity telethon The Big Feed, which aims to help over one million families in need, has just wrapped its 14-hour broadcast. Host and founder Wayne Langford re-joins Mark Leishman to share how the big show went.

Hayden Donnell joins Mark Leishman to dissect the latest media news, including the existence of a video of Wellington mayor Tory Whanau on a drunken night out, the new AUT media ownership report, leaked documents showing RNZ's new youth strategy, and Ryan Bridge's new home on Newshub's revamped 7pm offering.

'Up the Wahs', a bird advocate sassing British comedian John Oliver, and Nicola Willis asking of Grant Roberston 'how big is his hole?' are all quips that have been deemed defining of the year that was 2023 in Aotearoa New Zealand. These and more have been nominated for the annual Quote of the Year competition run by Massey University. To review this year's contenders and tell us what makes a good quote, Mark Leishman is joined by Massey University speech writing specialist Dr Heather Kavan.

A team of University of Auckland researchers have transformed an abandoned bowling green in Waharoa, a rural community in Waikato, into a 'public edible landscape' - a big greenhouse full of crops and fresh foods. The community are free to come and go as they please, pick the fruits and vegetables, enjoy the greenery, and the researchers say spaces like this just scratch the surface of what is possible with putting food into our public spaces. Mark Leishman speaks to the lead researcher Dr Barbara Ribeiro.

If you're in Tauranga this Saturday and looking for a bargain, you might make a beeline to Papamoa - more specifically, Butterworth Crescent and Coutts Street. More than 25 neighbours from the area and their children have banded together for a monster garage sale to sell hundreds of household goods, toys, jewellery and even a ute in the lead-up to Christmas. The brains behind the Garage Sale Extravaganza are residents Ben and Stephanie Brock and they join Mark Leishman.