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RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Hercules Noble 'Will it Sourdough?
When you think of sourdough you might flash back to covid lockdowns when every man and their dog suddenly became a sourdough expert. One Aucklander who took it to the next level is Hercules Noble. Hercules is one of Auckland's most in demand private chefs and perhaps is best known for his popular 'Will it Sourdough' series on social media where he takes a random dish and sees if he can transform it into a loaf of sourdough. Think tiramisu, carbonara, or earl grey tea flavoured loaves. Hercules Noble talks about what life as a private chef is really like and shares his sourdough secrets with Paddy Gower and Mihi Forbes. Hercules Noble Photo: OUTSPOKEN

RNZ News
5 hours ago
- RNZ News
Commonwealth Poet Laureate
This week notable New Zealand poet and academic, Selina Tusitala Marsh has been named as the very first Commonwealth Poet Laureate. The position will involve Marsh crafting original poems for flagship events like the Commonwealth People's Forum and Ministerial and Heads of Government Meetings. It's already turning out to a very big year for Selina, who was awarded the Katherine Mansfield Residency in Menton in the South of France. To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.


The Spinoff
6 hours ago
- The Spinoff
The Weekend: The illusion of choice
Madeleine Chapman reflects on the week that was. Over the past two years, The Spinoff has published more than 130 entries in our Cost of Being series. We got off to a shaky start, with a number of readers believing that presenting poor people's spending habits was glamourising poverty (bad) and presenting rich people's spending habits was celebrating wealth (even worse). Thankfully, as more and more New Zealanders – and yes, they are all written by real people – shared their financial realities, the real reason for the Cost of Being's popularity has revealed itself. We are all nosy and we are all judgy. What a joy it is to get such a peek into a stranger's life, and then to be able to quietly judge all of their financial decisions. We all make so many decisions every day that it can be equal parts comforting and aspirational to see how others choose differently. And that's the key part: choices. We aren't judging people, we're judging their choices. As if all choices happen in the same reality. This week's Cover Story was Alex Casey's excellent deep-dive into why so many New Zealand women get botox. She spoke to dozens of women who got the treatment and was surprised by how positively they spoke about its effects. But even those who had no regrets and were happy to keeping doing it questioned whether or not this choice they had made was really a choice at all. Did they really want to have a smooth forehead or had societal conditioning, ageism and sexism all combined to give the impression that this just had to be done? The judgement and shame around 'cosmetic' spending is perhaps only rivalled by judgement about alcohol. If you used the Cost of Being as a sample of the population, you'd think New Zealanders are all sober. This is obviously not true but I suspect no one really wants to reveal how much they spend on something as 'non-essential' as alcohol lest they be judged, albeit anonymously, for it. Two days ago, while launching Rotorua's first ever 'beat team' to patrol the city, police minister Mark Mitchell questioned how many of the city's rough sleepers were really homeless. 'From my own experience many of the rough sleepers have got somewhere to go,' he said. 'It's more a lifestyle choice for them.' He's probably right. Many rough sleepers technically have other places they could go. But I wonder if Mitchell has considered what sort of choices are out there if the preferred one is to sleep on the street in the middle of winter. I love reading every Cost of Being entry and, yes, I love to scratch my head at some of the random choices people make. But every once in a while I have to remind myself that no choice is made in a vacuum, and sometimes a 'choice' is just a means of survival. Want to contribute to the Cost of Being? Fill out the questionnaire here. The stories Spinoff readers spent the most time with this week Feedback of the week 'I'm in my late 30s and feel really similarly about all the points in the article. I'm really fucking vain and I want to look my best, but I also feel really strongly this is yet another patriarchal and capitalist pressure on feminine-coded bodies. I'm also a high school teacher very aware of all the shit that is pouring through the sponsored social media posts peppering my girl students' algorithms and I am rebelling by allowing my age to see seen on my face – side note, my frown lines are hard won and can be weaponized against a class of unruly year 9s or 10s.'