Saturday Morning with Jack Tame Newstalk ZB

De-icing the freezer. That's it, without doubt, the worst possible domestic chore.  

Because you know, the tricky thing - is once you've successfully taken the plug out of the wall, got rid of the electricity, melted the water. Where does it all go? Where does the water go? I remember my mum running a system with our big chest freezer when I was a kid. She needed buckets. She needed pots and pans, towels and mops, baby baths even and still it took her the whole weekend.  

But now you know what, I'm not totally sure that deicing the freezer is still Top of the Pops in miserable domestic jobs. And that is the kind of sentence only ever uttered by someone who has recently tried to fill a bean bag. Ugh.  

Are bean bags having a moment? I reckon they might be, and I just personally figured that having a versatile option for vegging out in front of the telly might be quite nice when I searched them online there were a couple of different options for beanbags. For most you had to buy the bag and then the beans. Separate. But if you really wanted, you could spend a little bit more money and order a bean bag that was already filled. I thought. What do they take me for? Some kind of sucker? Bean bags, it turns out, actually have two bags. So you fill the inner bag and then you put that inside the outer bag. It's easy in principle, not necessarily in practise.  

I figured that I would tackle the job alone as a nice surprise for when my wife got home. That was my first mistake. I began in the lounge. That was my second mistake. I laid out the bean bag in it and snipped the top corner off the huge bag of beans. 200 litres of them. As the scissor blades glided through the plastic, it was kind of like a can of fizzy drink that had been furiously shaken up. Beans exploded out all over me, all over the floor, all over the couch. Everywhere. And they seem to have some sort of static electricity attraction. So even as I picked them off my chest and tried to sweep them together with my fingers off the carpet, the beans kind of had a mind of their own.  

20 minutes down. For my second attempt, I moved into the kitchen, pinched part of the inner bag in a kitchen drawer so that I could hold the bag open as soon as I started pouring the beans, I inadvertently relaxed the inner bag, closing the mouth of the opening. And pouring roughly 10,000 bean bag beans all over the kitchen floor.  

It turns out when you get on your hands and knees and start trying to pick up pathetically small bits of polystyrene, you get a new appreciation for just how greasy the kitchen floor actually is. It made them less staticky, but alas, it did not make them easier to collect. I cut a pitiful figure when my wife found me scratching around trying to pinch up the last of the beans from under the fridge. Another half an hour I'll never get back.  

If there's one thing my experience has taught me, filling a bean bag is a two-person job. It's also the kind of thing where you should really review the instructional video on YouTube before kicking off. If I'd done that, I would have known the best place to fill the bean bag isn't in the lounge, or in the kitchen. But in an empty bath. That way, if there is any spillage and trust me, there will be spillage at the very least it's contained.  

Third time was a relative charm. It wasn't seamless. We still managed to pour litres of beans onto the floor. I still spent ages on my hands and knees scrambling around in the muck. Every time I thought I'd got them all, I walked out of the room for a moment and then came back in, only to discover a couple of rogue beans hiding underneath some furniture. I feel like they're going to keep popping up for months.  

At least, though there is an upside: if I ever feel like a lazy slob for crashing into my bean bag. and vegging out in front of the television, I can remind myself, earnestly - nah, I had to work for this. 

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On the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame Full Show Podcast for Saturday 15 June 2024, star of this year's Armageddon Expo John Barrowman joins Jack to discuss his sci-fi legacy and what it is about shows like Doctor Who that fans connect to so enduringly. 

Jack's DIY endeavours continued with this week's task: the beanbag. 

Kevin Milne was mightily impressed by podcasting this week, reaffirming that we are very much still in the days of quality long-form interviews. While, Dr Bryan Betty talks misconceptions of ADHD after it's recent media spotlight following the diagnosis of public figures. 

Get the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame Full Show Podcast every Saturday on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Estelle Clifford reviews Born in the Wild by Tems. 

Tems self-produced much of the LP alongside GuityBeatz, the Ghanaian Afropop DJ behind her 2021 EP If Orange Was a Place.  

It’s been praised by Pitchfork for its “Polyrhythmic soundscape, adorned with the earthy tones of conga drums, wind chimes, and shekere rattles, provides a counterweight to the homogenized sound of contemporary Afropop.” 

Music reviewer Estelle Clifford told Jack Tame “This is her growth on something that’s a universal attraction with afrobeats.” 

Clifford says “She’s worked behind the scenes, but now her wn stuff is taking the forefront.” 

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Catherine Raynes is here to review some books with Jack Tame. 

Smoke by Michael Brissenden  

Detective Alex Markov has recently returned to her small hometown of Jasper, California, after leaving the LAPD in disgrace, only to find her new colleagues don't want her either. When a deadly wildfire sweeps through Jasper her investigations find a deadly underbelly beneath the smoke - a town for sale to the highest bidder and authorities playing games within games, in which she's the prize pawn. 

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson 

A young woman's life is forever changed in the summer after World War I when she befriends a group of independent, motorcycle-riding women in a seaside town on the English coast - a captivating novel from the bestselling author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. 

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Earlier this year, Princess Cruises launched their next-generation flagship, Sun Princess, the first of two planned Sphere-class vessels to enter the Princess fleet. (Star Princess is launched next year.)  

With a capacity for 4300 guests and 1600 crew, and weighing in at 177,000 tons, she’s a twinkling ocean beauty. 

Mike Yardley recently hopped on board – he joined Jack Tame on Newstalk ZB Saturday Morning to discuss. 

For more insights on sailing aboard Sun Princess, Mike's article is on the website.

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Over half of New Zealand workers are experiencing severe burnout – worse than Covid numbers. 

In April, Massey Business School Survey found that the highest levels of burnout are among clerical workers, education professionals, office managers and health professionals. 

Umbrella Wellbeing Clinical Psychologist Dougal Sutherland told Jack Tame “You can get into a situation where co-workers try out-do each other, which could affect employee relations.” 

Sutherland’s advice for employees is “Focus on the aspects of situation that you can control – like preparing your CV.” 

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