The Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin

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News, opinion, analysis, lifestyle and entertainment – we’ve got your Sunday morning listening covered with The Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin on Newstalk ZB.

3D AGO

Baz Luhrmann: film director on his new project EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert

Acclaimed Australian director Baz Luhrmann is the man behind films like The Great Gatsby, Moulin Rouge, Romeo and Juliet - and he's spent time exploring Elvis Presley's work. Luhrmann directed the 2022 Elvis biopic, and it was during that production process that he discovered hours and hours of unseen Elvis concert footage down a Warner Brothers salt mine. He used the footage to craft EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert. "There's not a frame of AI in this movie and there's no visual effects - I'd like to say the only visual effect is the effect Elvis has on the audience." LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

14 min
3D AGO

Whitcoulls Recommends: The Antihero and Strangers

The Antihero by Gregg Hurwitz. This is the latest in the series of thrillers about Evan Smoak, otherwise known as Orphan X - who was trained by the Government from childhood in the art of black ops but has since left the scheme and now uses his skills and talents to do good. He goes by the name of The Nowhere Man and when people in distress call on him he goes to their aid, his only stipulation being that they must pass on his contact number to someone else who needs his help - and in this latest outing, his help is indeed very badly needed. These books are great fun - a combination of Evan’s superhuman fighting skills, luxury tastes, digital whizz sidekick, and a willing suspension of disbelief. Strangers by Belle Burden. Belle Burden is American royalty - she’s a descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt and her grandmother was the legendary Babe Paley. She thought she was happily married to a hedge fund guy and when Covid hit New York City the family relocated to their country estate where he promised to look after them during the pandemic - then one week in she received a phone message from someone to say that her husband was having an affair with this man’s wife and her world fell apart. Her husband walked out, saying he didn’t want anything to do with her or their kids and largely stuck to his words. This is a meditation on betrayal, on being blindsided by the loss of her marriage, and on how badly some super rich men will behave given half a chance. Clearly money wasn’t an issue for the author either, but to have the rug pulled out from under her during such uncertain times and then to write about it with such grace and clarity makes for a very good read. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

5 min
3D AGO

Megan Singleton: BloggerAtLarge.com writer on Sagrada Familia being completed after 144 years

The final piece of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia has been laid in place. This brings the church to its maximum final height 144 years after work began. BloggerAtLarge.com writer Megan Singleton explained the significance of this development. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

4 min
3D AGO

Kelsey Waghorn: White Island survivor talks new book about the experience

As Whakaari/White Island exploded around tour guide Kelsey Waghorn, she was convinced this was the end of her life. Waghorn is among the 25 people who were seriously injured but survived the December 9 eruption in 2019 - while 22 were killed in the eruption. She shared a full account of her story in her new book, Surviving White Island. "You look at the video of the eruption - and it's the first time I got shown the video of the eruption, in hospital...and it was just all hectic." LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

16 min
3D AGO

The Sunday Panel: What does Andrew's arrest mean for the royals?

This week on The Sunday Panel, journalist and editor, Jo McCarroll, and host of The Front Page podcast, Chelsea Daniels joined in on a discussion about the following issues of the day - and more! Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was recently arrested after being accused of sharing confidential information with the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein while he was trade envoy for the United Kingdom. What does this mean for the royals? Do we need to oust Charles as our head of state? After the Government backtracked on their housing intensification plan, Heather du Plessis-Allan wrote a piece in the Herald defending the concerns from Auckland residents over housing. Do we think this is justified? LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

8 min
3D AGO

Full Show Podcast: 22 February 2026

On the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin Full Show Podcast for Sunday 22 February 2026, acclaimed film director Baz Luhrmann is returning to the world of Elvis with a stunning new concert documentary. Baz talks about finding hours of unseen footage in old Warner Brothers salt mines and the arduous job of bringing the King back to life no the big screen. When Whakaari-White Island erupted in December 2019, tour guide Kelsey Waghorn thought she was going to die. She joins Francesca to talk about how she survived and her lengthy recovery from her burns. Former US Under Secretary of Commerce and Security talks about Donald Trump's reaction to his tariffs being ruled illegal, while Francesca calls for the US to take the UK's lead in investigating those involved with Epstein, so his victims can finally have justice. And after 144 years of construction, Sagrada Familia has hit a major milestone. Travel blogger Megan Singleton shares an update and some travel tips for anyone off to see Barcelona's famous church. Get the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin Full Show Podcast every Sunday on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

1h 57m
3D AGO

Mike van de Elzen: Spiced passata sauce

Spiced passata sauce Cook time: 30 minutes Prep time: 5 minutes Serves: 4-6 12-15 ripe tomatoes 2 sticks rosemary 10 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed slightly 1 tbsp flaky salt 2 tbsp sunflower oil 1 fresh chili, stalk removed and cut in half 1 tbsp honey Start by turn on your oven to 220*c Cut the tomatoes in half and lay onto a roasting tray, sprinkle over some flaky salt, smashed garlic, chili and rosemary. Drizzle with a little oil and fire into the oven to roast. Roast at for 30 minutes or until the tomatoes just start to collapse and colour. Remove and allow to cool, using a potato masher or stick blender to puree the tomatoes into a sauce. Now pass the sauce through a sieve to remove all the seeds and any skins. Place the sauce back into a pot and bring up to a simmer, skimming off any fat raising to the surface. Add honey and check the seasoning - and it's ready to bottle. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

8 min
3D AGO

Dr Michelle Dickinson: nanotechnologist on what a recent bonobo study reveals about imagination

A bonobo named Kanzi was sitting at a table across from a researcher. On the table are two completely empty clear cups and an empty clear jug. The researcher pretends to pour juice into both cups. Then she pretends to dump the juice out of one of them, turning it upside down and shaking it as if to show it’s empty. Then she asks Kanzi, “Where’s the juice?” There is no juice, but most of the time, Kanzi points to the cup that is supposed to still contain the imaginary juice. The study, published in Science, is the first controlled evidence that a nonhuman ape can represent something mentally that isn’t physically there, and keep track of it as events unfold. In the study, three controlled experiments were used to test whether an ape could actually track a pretend object in a consistent, rule-based way. In the first experiment, Kanzi watched the pretend pouring and pretend dumping, and then had to identify which cup still 'had' the invisible juice. Even when the researchers moved the cups around, he usually pointed to the correct one. That suggests he wasn’t just memorising a position, he was mentally tracking the imagined contents. But maybe, you might think, he believed there was real juice hidden in there somehow. So the researchers ran a second experiment to rule that out. This time, one cup had real juice in it and the other had pretend juice. When asked what he wanted to drink, Kanzi overwhelmingly chose the real juice, so he clearly understood the difference between imagination and reality. In a third test, they switched from juice to grapes. The researcher pretended to take a grape from an empty container and place it into one of two jars, then pretended to empty one jar. When asked, 'Where’s the grape?' Kanzi again pointed to the jar that was supposed to still contain the imaginary grape. This matters because imagination has long been considered one of the defining features of being human. Human children typically start pretend play around age two, and even younger babies show signs they understand make-believe scenarios. But until now, scientists hadn’t demonstrated this ability under controlled conditions in other animals. Humans and bonobos share a common ancestor from around six to nine million years ago. If the roots of imagination stretch back that far, then this capacity didn’t suddenly appear with us. It may be part of a much older cognitive toolkit. If apes can think about things that aren’t present, if they can hold an imagined object in mind and update that representation as events change, then their experience of the world may be far richer than we’ve assumed. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

4 min

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02/09/2023

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News, opinion, analysis, lifestyle and entertainment – we’ve got your Sunday morning listening covered with The Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin on Newstalk ZB.