The Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin

Yesterday, an article with Stuff owner and CEO Sinead Boucher was released on their website.  

It was a wide ranging interview that included discussion about the significant impact big tech companies such as Google, Meta, and TikTok are having on traditional, New Zealand owned media companies.

These platforms attract the vast majority of New Zealand’s digital advertising spend, but due to a lack of regulation they avoid paying a meaningful tax bill in New Zealand. This is galling for local media companies who invest in journalism and content, only to watch big tech scrape, crawl and extract this content for their own gain.  

We’ve all seen the result of this disruption. Local newspapers, television broadcasters and online news outlets have experienced declining revenues, leading to newsroom closures and job losses.

We can’t blame big tech entirely for the challenges facing traditional media. Consumer habits have shifted towards digital platforms and local media companies have struggled to adapt to audience expectations and preferences. 

The Government should have a legitimate and important role to play in all of this, but are nowhere to be seen. They could be regulating big tech to create a fair and competitive digital marketplace and to protect the public interest by maintaining a strong, independent media sector which supports democracy and informed public debate. 

So why is the Government continuing to drag its feet when to comes to anything to do with big tech? Be it social media bans, criminalising deep fakes, requiring digital platforms to negotiate payments for news content, or making them pay an appropriate amount of tax? Is it too hard or too complex? Is there a lack of interest? Or is it self-serving? 

Boucher shared some concerning feedback she’s had from politicians:

“There’s some actual things that senior politicians have said to me in the last year: One said ‘If you were nicer to us, maybe we would care if you lived or died’. Another said ‘We effectively weighed up the interests of you and big tech and decided they were more important to the country than journalistic organisations’.”  

Boucher also claimed politicians today are thinner-skinned than they used to be, which they quite possibly are. If you can’t handle scrutiny, I’m not sure you’re in the right job. But after watching Scrutiny Week in Parliament I would suggest politicians are as brutal to their colleagues as the media can be to them.

I’ve had politicians complain to me about a media organisation or individual journalist before, but there has always been an understanding that democracy requires the fourth estate and that where there are politicians there will be media, and vice versa.  

I’m giving politicians the benefit of the doubt that they’re not so petty as to allow the demise of democracy because of their own fears, self-interest and inadequacies.  

But it still begs the question, with all its social harm, misinformation, disinformation, scams, deep fakes, AI slop and disregard for suppression, why is the NZ Government so scared of making a move against big tech?  

Unfortunately, I suspect it’s a clear sign of who wears the pants in the relationship.

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A book described as ‘the most devastating royal biography ever’ has been reissued, with new material on the behaviour of the former Prince Andrew revealed.

Author Andrew Lownie has updated his book on the former Duke and Duchess of York with a new chapter about Andrew and Sarah's behaviour based off interviews with multiple sources and numerous official information requests.

Lownie says the update is designed to give people more information following Andrew's arrest in February - and speculate about the former royal's future.

"We've got victims who are coming forward, we've got police investigations now, in several countries and several police forces. So I can give you another prediction - we're going to get plenty more new material." 

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Daughters of the Sun and Moon by Lisa See. Some readers may remember her wonderful book The Island of Sea Women a few years ago which was simply outstanding - she writes terrific historical fiction. This new one is set in1870 when three Chinese women arrive separately in the tiny settlement of Los Angeles where they build new lives amidst racism and hardship. Dove, Petal and Moon navigate heartbreak, homesickness and friendship in a fascinating insight into that era, supported by photos and extensive research.

Rule of Lies by Jamison T.Firestone. Extraordinary nonfiction. This young American lawyer moved to the Soviet Union just as it was starting to unravel, where he was able to make the most of the newly arrived capitalism sweeping through Russia. The trouble was, so too did many of those coming out of the former USSR, with state sponsored corruption, theft and sabotage happening on an industrial scale. This is a jaw dropping account about a truly unbelievable time – just wait til you read about the IKEA scam. Fans of Bill Browder’s books will love it. 

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Vancouver's getting some extra attention this year as the 2026 FIFA World Cup continues - but what does the region offer outside of football?

Vancouver is regarded as a very walkable city and a hugely popular cruise port. 

Bloggeratlarge.com writer Megan Singleton revealed what you can do in Vancouver - and what cruises give you the best experience. 

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Broadcaster and journalist Wilhemina O’Keefe and ZB Wellington Mornings host Nick Mills joined in on a discussion about the following issues of the day - and more! 

The Green Party’s election tax package has accidentally been released early, with the Herald discovering it online hours before it was meant to be officially launched. Co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was set to appear on ZB and then backed out of her interview. What do we make of this? Could the Greens have handled this better? 

National has promised changes to Kiwisaver will come if they're re-elected. Do we think this is the right move? And what did we make of the earlier coalition comments? 

And the Hurricanes have breezed their way to a Super Rugby victory last night. What did we think of the game?

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Three years ago, OceanGate’s Titan submersible imploded while on a journey to view the wreck of the Titanic, killing all five people on board.

Christine Dawood's 48-year-old husband and 19-year-old son, Suleman and Shazhana Dawood, were among the people killed on the historic dive trip. 

Dawood has since shared her story of that week, and the subsequent grief following her losses, in a new memoir - 96 Hours.

"Even though, obviously, we knew they are not here, that they were missing - sometimes, speaking out, the reality hits you and you don't want it to be true."

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Listen to the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin Full Show Podcast for Sunday 21 June.
Get the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin Full Show Podcast every Sunday on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Electrolyte beverages are designed to be easily absorbed in the gut to quickly rebalance mineral and fluid levels - but research indicates they come with risks if you consume too much.

These drinks were originally created to prevent dehydration and electrolyte loss in young athletes who sweat and trained for hours in hot weather, which could hinder performance.  

Naturopath and wellness expert Erin O'Hara explained further, and revealed how essential these trending beverages are.

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Toasted Reuben sandwich

Cook time: 1 hour 

Prep time: 10 minutes 

Serves: 6

500gm corned silverside  

2 bay leaves  

1 tbsp black peppercorns  

12 slices sourdough, thin sliced  

1/2 cup Dijon mustard  

6 large gherkins  

250gm sliced Swiss cheese Quick  

Sauerkraut (make 2 cups)  

1 tbsp sunflower oil  

1 onion, finely sliced  

1 tbsp crushed garlic  

1/2 savoy cabbage  

1 tsp sea salt  

1/2 cup cider vinegar  

1/2 cup apple cider  

1/4 cup water

Remove the silver-side from packaging and rinse under running water. Immerse in a large saucepan of water with bay leaves and peppercorns. Cover and simmer for 1 hour. Turn off and allow meat to cool in the liquid while you make the sauerkraut.  

To assemble, spread Dijon mustard generously over the bread. Lay 2 tbsp of sauerkraut on 6 slices. Thinly slice the silver-side. Stack meat, gherkins and cheese over the sauerkraut, then top with remaining bread. Place into your sandwich press and cook for 5 minutes.  

Quick sauerkraut  

Heat oil in a frying pan. Add onion and garlic and cook over low heat until translucent. Add cabbage, salt, vinegar, cider and water. Simmer for 30 minutes until all liquid has been absorbed. Leave to cool. 

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When most people think of animals that understand human communication, dogs usually come to mind. But according to a new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, goats may deserve a place on that list too.

Researchers discovered that goats can use the direction of a human voice to locate hidden food. This is a sophisticated skill previously demonstrated in dogs and human babies, but not even consistently in chimpanzees, our closest living relatives. 
 
Animals constantly use sounds to gather information about the world around them. Human babies can follow the direction of a person's voice to find objects, even when they cannot see the speaker. Domestic dogs can do this too. Surprisingly, previous experiments found that chimpanzees generally struggle with the task.

The new study asked a simple question: can goats do it?

Researchers worked with 29 adult goats. A large wooden screen was placed in a testing area, with a red bucket positioned at each end. One bucket contained a food reward, the other was empty. The goats could see the buckets but could not see the researcher hidden behind the screen. 
 
The researchers ran three different conditions to determine exactly what information the goats were using. 
 
1. Reward-directed speech. The hidden researcher placed food in one bucket and then sat closer to the empty bucket. If the goats simply walked toward the source of the voice, they would choose incorrectly. 
 
Instead, the researcher turned their head and body toward the bucket containing food and enthusiastically said 
"Oh look, look there, this is great!" 
 
2. No speech control. In the second condition, everything was identical except the researcher remained completely silent. This tested whether goats might simply be smelling the food. 
 
3. Non-deward-directed speech control. In the third condition, the researcher spoke exactly as before, but deliberately faced away from both buckets. The voice was present, but it provided no useful directional information.

If goats were truly using voice direction, their performance should fall back to chance levels. 
 
Each goat completed four trials in every condition, giving researchers a total of 12 tests per animal. The goats performed best when the direction of the voice pointed toward the food.

The goats performed no better than chance when the researcher stayed silent so they were not finding the food by smell. When speech was present but carried no directional information, success again dropped to chance levels, showing that it was specifically the direction of the voice that mattered.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the study is how the goats compare with other species tested using the same experimental design.

• Human infants succeed roughly 80 percent of the time.
• Dogs succeed around 63 percent of the time.
• Chimpanzees generally fail to perform above chance. 
   

The goats' performance was remarkably similar to that of domestic dogs.

Interestingly, the researcher spoke German during the experiment, even though the goats lived in England. That means the animals were not responding to the meaning of the words themselves. They were using the direction of the voice, not the language being spoken.  

For an animal often stereotyped as stubborn or simple, that's a remarkable achievement. 

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