The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale in Auckland talking with regular guests Cathrine Dyer from Wellington and Robert Patman in Dunedin about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.
This edition also includes discussions with special guests Jonathan Lyons, PhD from Vancouver and Shamubeel Eaqub in Auckland on Iran and social cohesion in New Zealand, respectively.
This week:
Bernard and Peter began with a chat about the conflict in the Middle East and the fuel crisis, along with Christopher Luxon’s leadership vote in the National Caucus and the ensuing clash with Winston Peters.
Bernard mentioned in passing a podcast series1 he recently listened to on the Suez crisis and compared New Zealand’s current fuel crisis to the 1973 fuel crisis. Peter referred to a Guardian article2 about Donald Trump’s voter fraud claims this week. He also referred to a podcast3 on Israel and a collapse in US voter support for Israel mentioned in an Ed Luce article in the FT4. Bernard mentioned a WSJ-$ article5 on the drama in Trump’s White House.
Bernard, Peter and Cathrine then talked about this week’s report6 from The Macdiarmid Institute on CleanTech. There’s more commentary on that from the Science Media Centre7. Cathrine mentioned the ideas of Joseph Tainter, who wrote a book8 called The Collapse of Complex Societies.
Bernard, Peter, Robert and Jonathan talked about events in the Middle East, including the history of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Jonathan’s substack post9 about how the assassination Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei also killed off his religious edict against nuclear weapons.
Bernard, Peter and Shamubeel talked about yesterday’s second annual Social Cohesion in New Zealand report10 from the Helen Clark Foundation.
The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 200 paying subscribers and was produced and edited by Simon Josey.
The Hoon won the silver award for best current affairs podcast in last year’s New Zealand Podcast awards.
(This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing in full. Remember, all students and teachers who sign up for the free version with their .ac.nz and .school.nz email accounts are automatically upgraded to the paid version for free. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)
Ngā mihi nui.
Bernard
