Gossip Week – Troy Kingi on FIRST – A good read
...and other recs this week!
Kia ora, welcome to this week’s newsletter.
Five years ago this week, MediaWorks closed down its short-lived gossip site Scout, erasing classic scoops like “Mike Hosking vacuums Ferrari” from the internet for good. We probably would have all forgotten about Scout completely by now were it not for the fact that back in 2015 The Spinoff was absolutely obsessed with it.
Here is a piece I have no collection of writing on my first day in the office frothing over a teaser video released the week before Scout launched. Here is Alex Casey’s power ranking of all the Scout stories the day it launched. And here is Duncan Greive’s Scout feature written two months later headlined “Anatomy of a corporate disaster”.
This week on The Spinoff, we’re exploring the role of gossip in Aotearoa’s past, present and future with Gossip Week. Let Alex Casey elaborate on why here, and keep an eye on the site throughout the week for some great reads. There’s also special Gossip Week episodes of Remember When... , The Real Pod and a FIRST gossip supercut to enjoy later in the week.
–Cal
This week’s new podcasts
On When the Facts Change [Apple | Spotify], Bernard Hickey looked at the Climate Commission report’s unrealistic and inadequate prescription to get to carbon zero. On The Fold [Apple | Spotify], Duncan Greive spoke to NZ Herald deputy political editor Derek Cheng about his one true love of rock climbing. On Business is Boring [Apple | Spotify], Simon Pound spoke to Georgia Robertson, the New Zealand CEO of Humanitix, an Australian ticketing app with a difference. The Dietary Requirements [Apple | Spotify] team met Chand Sahrawat about New Zealand’s hospitality staffing crisis. The Offspin [Apple | Spotify] chatted cricket with Sonia Gray. Remember When… [Apple | Spotify] remembered some truly wild celebrity rumours we believed to be true. And on The Real Pod [Apple | Spotify], Chris and Eli watched the penultimate ep of Drag Race Down Under, while Jane, Alex and Duncan welcomed a special guest to the studio – guess who don’t sue!
You Must Remember This
Sam says: “Being Gossip Week, there’s no better time to recommend You Must Remember This, Karina Longworth’s podcast about the forgotten history of Hollywood’s first century, where the only things bigger than the movies were the scandals. The current series follows the rise and fall of Hollywood’s first gossip columnists, Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. It might sound super niche, but it ends up being an incredibly prescient and fascinating look into why celebrity culture, and the media around it, is the way it is today.”
FIRST
If you followed the trail of clues for Sheep on The Masked Singer NZ you probably already know how much Troy Kingi loves going diving, and especially going diving for crayfish at night. He tells a good yarn about one such night dive in this week’s episode of FIRST, and how it nearly went very wrong. He also has a new album out this Friday!
Sleep With Me
Lucy says: “Having trouble sleeping? I've come back to the podcast Sleep With Me again and again at 4:00am in the morning over the years . The whole idea is the narrator Drew, a former librarian, puts you to sleep by telling you nonsense stories in his dull voice. There’s something about his voice which just works, and the stories are so nonsense your brain can't tune in or make sense. It's monotone white noise! I usually skip about 30min into each episode to skip all the ads and intro. [Here’s an interesting New Yorker interview with Drew from a few years ago where he talks about how and why he does it!]
Leave Love Out of This
Toby Manhire says: “He sings about water, he sings about railways, he sings about paper mills, he sings about love. Anthonie Tonnon is the cerebral heartthrob you need in your life, and his new single 'Leave Love Out Of This', title track for his upcoming third album, might be his best yet: infectious, hauntingly beautiful. The video is spellbinding. And: he's announcing today a tour, including a night at the Royal Opera House in Whanganui, where he lives and is now deeply involved in the city's famous Durie Hill elevator, "the only public transport elevator in the southern hemisphere". Michelle Langstone has interviewed him for the Spinoff's big profile on Saturday – please read it.”
Haute Le Mode
Leonie says: “I enjoyed Disney’s Cruella just fine but I really enjoyed the costumes, and so I really, really enjoyed this episode of Haute Le Mode, which delved into the design inspiration for the film. Haute Le Mode is the YouTube channel of Luke Meagher, a budding fashion historian and archivist, whose reads of red carpet looks and other fashion events tread a fun line between shady and informative. In this episode he delivers an almost frame-by-frame analysis, looking at the film’s nods to Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen and Charles James (and many more), the influence of Victorian fashion, punk, the Portobello Road market, the histories of Liberty of London, and fabrics like paisley. It’s packed with information and images of beautiful garments. I’m a sucker for pop culture history, and this was utterly satisfying.”
The Wisdom of Trauma
Julia says: “Trauma is the invisible force that shapes our lives. It shapes the way we live, the way we love and the way we make sense of the world. It is the root of our deepest wounds. In The Wisdom of Trauma, Dr. Gabor Maté gives us a new vision: a trauma-informed society in which parents, teachers, physicians, policy-makers and legal personnel are not concerned with fixing behaviours, making diagnoses, suppressing symptoms and judging, but seek instead to understand the sources from which troubling behaviours and diseases spring in the wounded human soul. He points us to the path of individual and collective healing."
A good read
My good frenemy and former employee of The Spinoff Hayden Donnell wrote a post for David Farrier’s excellent Webworm newsletter last week that’s more or less about getting older. It captures some of my barely-formed thoughts and feelings and those of a lot of other people too by the looks of the comment thread. If you are online a lot of the time you may agree also!
That’s all for this week! Please reply to get in touch and share with anyone else who might like to subscribe too. See you next Wednesday 👋