The phrase 'Pacific family' seems to be gathering steam of late. Earlier this week, visiting Australian foreign minister Penny Wong said Pacific security should be provided by the Pacific family, in the wake of China looking to sign sweeping trade and security agreements with 10 countries across the region.  Dr Anna Powles is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at Massey University. Her research focuses on geopolitics, security and conflict in the Pacific Islands region.

In 2016, Auckland-based journalist Hazel Phillips found herself disillusioned with life in the big smoke. She packed up her all her belongings, except for a tramping pack, boots, and ski gear and headed south.

Listener Feedback for 11 June.

Set in a fictional country and told in a made-up language, new film Nude Tuesday follows a couple who head to new-age retreat Wøndeulä (pronounced Vue-de-la) as a last ditch effort to rekindle their lacklustre marriage. The absurdist comedy is based on an original screenplay by Jackie Van Beek, who also stars as the film's sexually repressed protagonist, Laura.

Formed in 1972 in Wellington, the Values Party claims the title of the world's first national-level environmentalist party, and was a precursor to the Green Party we know today. The party's founder and leader Tony Brunt was, at 25 years old, part of a new generation that was starting to push back against the conservative, conformist monoculture dominating New Zealand at the time.

Best known around these parts as one-half of musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, Bret McKenzie is, in his own words, one of the best comedy songwriters in the biz.

Computers might be close to being able to write better than humans, but not without dropping some real clangers. Recently developed AI technology uses 'deep learning' - machine learning featuring artificial neural networks - to produce text. The Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) technology is being hailed for writing original prose with human fluency, but not always.

When Dr Ian Griffin spotted some strange activity in Dunedin's night sky on St Patrick's Day in 2015, he knew he had to capture it.

Israel's governing coalition is about to mark its first anniversary on June 13, however recent events have raised questions around how much longer it can last.

Listener Feedback for Saturday Morning for 4 June 2022.