This week, Alicia talks about how to live your values and put weight behind them, taking a look at two recent stories in New Zealand current events. We look at the Starship Foundation's rejection of a donation from gambling proceeds, and pay parity for the Black Ferns, to ask: what does it mean to really live your values? How do we accept challenges and failures as opportunities to make a stand? What happens when we don't? Enjoy!

In this episode, Alicia talks about littering - what it means to shed our detritus, physically, digitally or even emotionally...

What is diversity washing - and why is it such a problem? Alicia talks about the difference between visible and substantive diversity and why the latter is so important in society, media and the workplaces. She calls bullsh*t on corporate diversity and inclusion, makes an impassioned case for bringing class into the conversation and recommends throwing out the table, rather than saving a place at it. Also features: Lizzo chat, COVID book recommendations.

Book recommendation 1: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Book recommendation 2: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Bonus recommendation: Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be by Steven Pressfield

Article mentioned: The Problem With Professionalism by Alicia McKay

Alicia McKay tackles the media madness surrounding the death of QEII, gets under the skin of royalism and exposes the irony and hypocrisy of declaring a public holiday for the Queen in Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori. Constitutional monarchy is dead. Long live Aotearoa.

Alicia talks about how pointing fingers at people, while letting systems operate unchecked, is damaging all of us. This week we're talking about patriarchy, politics and infidelity through a systems lens - and getting under the skin of unchallenged morality like table manners.

You can read the Family Man article here

And a recent article about why women are so exhausted here.

Also, check out these great resources on systems thinking and problem solving:

If Dr Russell Ackoff had given a Ted Talk

The Systems Thinker Guide to Daily Systems Thinking Practice

Fix the System, Not the Women: Laura Bates

This week, Alicia tackles the guilt of conscious consumerism in a world designed for bad behaviour. the hypocritical way we treat cults and gangs, domestic labour inequity, Leonardo DiCaprio and Louis CK. 

Alicia channels her best rant energy on this week's show, tackling:

- Sickness, and the idea that lifting restrictions will help businesses

- Simplified nostalgia and the problem with the good old days

- Low-rate political rhetoric that hates on the poor

- Cruel optimism and toxic positivity.

If you need a good rant in your life, this is the episode for you.

Today we discuss the deep shame of being caught in an act of petty shenanigans, the great human meatball, and the perils of being blacklisted by both the Russian government and a retailer in Dunedin.

Alicia rants about internet trolls with the audacity to correct people's lived experience, Callum shares some controversial public art and we contemplate the power of language and social media.

In a stormy week of disrupted travel, the gang talk about things we take for granted, the Samuel Vines Boots theory of poverty and the dangers of romanticising past poverty through the distorted lens of nostalgia.