Nights

Aotearoa's first Mental Health Film Festival is currently touring the country. It's had stops in Auckland & Christchurch, with events in Wellington, Hamilton, Napier & Tauranga still to come. The event is put on by the Mental Health foundation with the aim to "shift perspectives one frame at a time". The screenings consist of nine short films including 'Fred Is Cold' - an animated epic about a lonely fridge. Co-writer and director Ben Wilson joins Mark Leishman...

Lynn Freeman joins Mark Leishman to review the pick of the podcasts. This week she's sharing her pick of science podcasts. Featuring: Ologies, The Naked Scientists, Inside Science & NASAs Curious Universe.

A new play set to premiere this Saturday at Wellington's Circa Theatre tackles a subject tackles that often bothers many people: "Is life worth living after 90?" That's the core question at the centre of playwright Rachel's McAlpine's new play The Secret Lives of Extremely Old People. One of the stars of the show will be familiar to many RNZ listeners. Former overnight host and actor, the magnanimous Lloyd Scott is returning to the stage. And our Wellington studio... He joins us fresh from rehearsal.

At this point it's almost impossible to avoid the Black Friday advertising with plastered across our screens. Instead of getting caught up in the hype one Wellington business has decided to give it's staff a day off instead.

Tomorrow will be "Slack Friday" for Bicycle Junction and instead of sales and consumerism instead of celebrating consumerism staff will be enjoying a day of riding bikes, camping and enjoying nature.

So to explain his thought process owner Dan Mikkelsen talks to Mark Leishman.

Would you rather amputate your dominant hand or have the reputation of being a paedophile? That's the kind of hypothetical question award-winning social psychology researcher Dr Andrew Vonasch asks people to study the power of reputation.

Angelman syndrome is a rare genetic condition that affects the nervous system and causes severe physical and learning disabilities. The Chairperson for The Angelman Network Ursula Christel's adult son has the syndrome. Ursula joins us...

Mark and Colin discuss coalition government talks, WeetBix, Rugby and the closure of Southland's best known store 'H and J Smith'.

Unless you've been living up a tree you'll know that the decadent Puteketeke was recently crowned bird of the century. This years vote has already helped Forest & Bird raise $600,000... Metal Birds - an auckland based company is helping them push that even higher. They make... you guessed it, metal bird silhouettes. For the last few years they've released a Bird Of The Year model, with 30% of the sale going to Forest & Bird. This year it comes with a little extra - a bonus John Oliver silhouette... And as with everything the John Oliver effect touches, this years sales have been the biggest yet... Metal Birds founder Phil Walters joins us.

Until seven or eight years ago Black Friday was a sales day in America, that few of us outside of the country had heard of. Since then it's grown into a global shopping phenomenon. A report released today by the website PriceSpy predicts that 1 in 3 of us plan to spend over $500 in the sale. Despite officially being this Friday, Instagram, Facebook and all the other platforms have been overrun with Black Friday ads for weeks. So what is it? Were did it come from? And are there good deals to be had or is it just manipulative marketing? To unpick all that Mark's joined by Bodo Lang - Professor of Marketing Analytics at Massey Business School.

In 2014 Pera Barrett set up a shoebox christmas appeal for 80 children at a local Porirua school. Now nine years on it's spread to over 16,000 tamariki nationwide. The programme invites people who want to donate a christmas gift to fill a box, and drop it off at a local school or community hub. The goal is to ensure no one misses out this Christmas. The project's grown soo huge this year, that to manage it all Pera has also launched a new, dedicated website "Koha Tree". Pera joins Mark to tell us more...