I begin today with a few a couple news items, including one about an American woman who was denied residence in New Zealand because she’s obese. For my main topic, I talk about some “home truths”, some truth and facts about New Zealand. This was inspired by some downright bizarre things I saw on some online forums. I talk about NZ houses, pay and taxes, public transport, crime and even prejudice. Whew! Feel free to ask about anything you’d like to know about.
Mentioned today:
Obese American woman has bid to live in New Zealand rejected
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This is the first of the stand-alone versions of what Jason and I used to call our “Politicasts”. You’ll be able to subscribe to this podcast separately if you want, but for the time being I’ll be posting it so subscribers to the AmeriNZ Podcast will get it automatically.
I was a blogger before I was a podcaster, and before that I was a listener and blog reader. I met today’s guest, Peter (aka epilonious) of the They Don’t Know podcast through blog/podcast comments and have gotten to know him since then. Our interactions have sometimes been, um, intense, but for him it’s been even more so with others. So I asked him why he does it, given those reactions. This leads to a wider discussion of blogs/forums and commenting generally, and how things can go wrong. Turns out, we do share some fundamental attitudes, which is probably one of the reasons we’re friends. That, and he’s wacky and fun.