The Department of Conversation with Pat Brittenden

Sam Seder is an American comedian, writer, actor, film director, television producer, philanthropist, and politically progressive talk radio host. Since 2010 he has hosted a daily political talk show, The Majority Report with Sam Seder.

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Professor Stephan Lewandowsky is an Australian psychologist. He has worked in both the United States and Australia, and is currently based at the University of Bristol, UK, where he is the chair of cognitive psychology at the School of Psychological Science. His research, which originally pertained to computer simulations of people's decision-making processes, recently has focused on the public's understanding of science and why people often embrace beliefs that are sharply at odds with scientific evidence.

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Stacey Morrison is a radio and TV host who can he heard weekdays on The Hits 4pm - 7pm with co-hosts Anika Moa and Mike Puru.

In February 2020, Stacey became "Cultural Advisor" on the long running Australian soap opera Home and Away after they introduced a Maori family to the show

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Sam Brooks is an award-winning playwright and dramatist. Brooks' work has twice earned him the Playmarket B4 25 New Zealand Young Playwright award. In 2014, Metro Magazine named Brooks "Auckland's Most Exciting Playwright". He won the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award in 2016.

Brooks currently works as the Culture Editor at The Spinoff, an online commentary and opinion magazine. He has also written for the Pantograph Punch, Metro Magazine, and the NZ Herald..

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Jordan Hamel is a Pōneke-based poet and performer. He was the 2018 New Zealand Poetry Slam Champion and has performed at slams and festivals across Aotearoa and the USA. In September 2019 he flew to San Diego to compete in the 2019 Individual World Poetry Slam Championships.

He is the co-editor of everyone's favourite lockdown lit-journal Stasis. He is also a co-editor of a Forthcoming Climate Change Poetry Anthology to be published by Auckland University Press. Recent poems of his have popped up in The Spinoff, Newsroom, SPORT 47, Poetry NZ Yearbook, Landfall and elsewhere.

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Nathan Joe is a Chinese-Kiwi playwright who often deals with issues of racial or sexual identity through a postmodern lens.

He is a graduate of the New Zealand Broadcasting School (2011) with a Bachelor in Broadcasting Communications (Digital Film and Television Production).

He won the "Playmarket b4 25" award in 2015 for Hippolytus Veiled: Or, Eros Beware! and 2016 for Like Sex which had been commissioned by Young & Hungry Arts Trust. He was also awarded the Auckland Live! "Free Your Mind" Development Award in the Auckland Fringe 2019 for I Am Rachel Chu.

As a critic, he is a regular contributor to Theatre Scenes and was previously the theatre editor at The Lumière Reader.

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Russell Brown is a media commentator, and the owner of the Public Address community of blogs, and writes the blog Hard News.

Brown's journalism career began in the early 1980s with the Christchurch Star and the music zine Rip It Up. In 1986, he moved to England where he wrote for various publications, mostly covering the music industry, before returning to New Zealand in 1991. From 2008 to 2012, he presented the media commentary programme Media7 on the TVNZ 7 digital channel. Following the closure of TVNZ 7 after its funding was not renewed, the show was picked up by TV3 and later on Maori Television as Media Take.

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Verity Johnson is a writer, TV presenter, occasional comedian and personal branding nerd, who loves to teach and inspire others on how to unlock their potential.

Verity writes for The New Zealand Herald, Fashion Quarterly, Miss FQ, Metro magazine, The Listener, College Humour, The Big Issue, Uno magazine and online at paulhenry.co.nz.

Verity has been seen on many NZ TV shows including the Paul Henry breakfast show, the AM show, The Rock, The Project, or on Radio NZ where she often hang out, talking about current affairs, news and my opinions on everything.

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An award-winning journalist, Brodie Kane has been seen on our TV screens and heard on our radio stations for the past 12 years. You may have caught her on The Hits Christchurch breakfast show or in various presenting roles at TVNZ. Her no-nonsense yet down-to-earth approach is unique in the industry and you can be guaranteed that what you see is what you get.

Brodie is based in Christchurch and is working through some very exciting projects, like the re-launch of her very successful podcast, The Girls Uninterrupted (previously Girls On Top) and is also working on a number of content creation projects for various brands and within the media industry too.

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Polly Gillespie is a radio host, columnist, author and more. Unless you've lived under a rock you will have heard Polly and her ex-husband Grant Kereama on a radio station at some stage over the last 30 plus years.

Polly has worked as an agony aunt, and is currently writing a book which is said to be 'saucy' along with delving into the world of podcasting and one to two other creative outlets.

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